Three
by icy roses
Summary: One life is not enough for love; Percy and Annabeth try for the Isles of the Blest, but it seems that fate is not always kind to them.
1. Part One

**Author's note: **This is an epic three-part Percy and Annabeth love story. Please enjoy.

**Disclaimer:** Not mine. Don't sue.

Three

by

Icy Roses

* * *

**Part One**

* * *

"_If you want a happy ending, that depends, of course, on where you stop your story."_ **– Orson Welles**

...

The end couldn't really be the end, because that wasn't not how life worked. When all was said and done, when the Great War had finished, wrapped itself up in neat ends, when the dead were mourned and buried, and the laurels were given to survivors – everyone went home, hung up their trophies, and returned to the infinitely more mundane task of forging a way ahead.

Because life went on. It always went on.

Even for Percy and Annabeth.

..o..

It wasn't hard to fall into a pattern of normality at first, and Percy and Annabeth were probably the least normal couple to lease an apartment in Manhattan. Well, the two of them and Clarisse and Chris, who conveniently lived two blocks down. Astonishingly, either by way of proximity or simply because they were all demigods who _remembered_, the four became fast friends.

Nobody expected that, but nobody expected a lot of things. Percy, for one, had learned that expectations were misleading and Annabeth had always been efficient at having more accurate expectations, so it worked out. Besides, Chris was an excellent cook, and the rest of them were awful at creating anything edible not out of a can, so the relationship was almost borne out of necessity anyway.

College in New York had been rough, but it also provided for many nights of Clarisse drinking Percy under the table, and well, that kind of thing can really cement an expedient friendship into a lifelong one. What with Annabeth passed out on the couch, and Chris being the sober one to make sure they didn't all end up in the hospital the next morning, plenty of memories were created.

And by that time, Chris and Clarisse had gotten married and Percy and Annabeth had gotten engaged, and it seemed like there was a great future ahead of them.

They didn't need an Oracle for a prediction—there was.

..o..

(There was the promise of a growing family—growing at a faster rate than they'd planned.)

"Twins!" he exclaims at the office.

The doctor looks between them with a practiced smile, the one that said she had dealt with this situation many a time. "Congratulations," she says. "I'll give you two a moment to sort this out." She closes the door softly behind her.

Annabeth props herself up on her elbow. She is a little pale. "Yeah, when we said we were ready for kids, I wasn't expecting—"

"Twins," he repeats, finishing her sentence for her.

"That," she agrees. She looks unsure for a minute. Breathes a little. She passes her thumb lightly across the ultrasound photo. "Wow," she says under her breath. "Would you look at that?"

Percy crosses the room, where he had been gripping the armrest during the prognosis, grinding his molars down to the roots. He kisses her swiftly on the forehead. He studies it over her shoulder, tilting his head one way and then another. "Well, to be honest, it looks like a badly botched negative to me. I can't really tell a foot from an elbow, so uh, it _could_ be twins or it could be a small giraffe in there; I have no idea. I guess I'll have to take the doctor's word for it, huh? There's no mistake, is there?"

Annabeth jerks the photo away from him. "Of course there's no mistake. What's that supposed to mean?"

"Nothing! I just don't want this to be the beginning of a long, downward spiral into The Percy and Annabeth version of Jon & Kate Plus Eight, you know?"

She stares at him, incredulous for a second, before bursting into a short, sharp laugh. "Really? Is that what you're thinking about right now?"

He rubs the back of his neck, sheepish.

"Let's see. We won't sign for a reality TV show – like we need cameras following us around when satyrs pop into our apartment every few weeks – I won't get that hideous, explosion haircut, and we'll try really hard not to sue TLC," she says, ticking off each one on her fingers. "Problem seems solved to me. And you would look horrible in Ed Hardy, so please don't try to pull it off."

He's grinning. "I won't make such a fashion faux pas as long as you're around." He twists to look at the ultrasound again. "So twins, eh? I think we can deal with those."

"That's good," she says, settling back and laying her head on the cushioned rest. "Because you knocked me up with your mutant sperm, so you better take full responsibility for it."

..o..

(And nobody could forget the bumpy road to parenthood.)

"Would you stop reading that fucking book?" she yells from across the room as she flips channels on the TV. "It's driving me crazy. The least you could do is stop reading it out loud. I have _babies_ in my stomach, not ticking _time bombs._ Clarisse, please do something about it. I give you full permission to bring him down with whatever force necessary. If he passes out, all the better. More dinner for me."

Clarisse, who is sitting on another couch in the living room, looks thoroughly amused. "No, really, this is much better than Sunday night TV, so I'm going to let it go on. Even though it's a tempting offer."

Annabeth growls. "You're no help at all."

Percy's head pops out from behind the door. "According to the book, it's pretty typical of you to have mood swings at this time, so I'm going to let it pass."

Annabeth lets out a strangled shout before heaving a sigh and throwing her head back on the couch, eyes shut in exasperation. "He's going to induce premature labor," she says to her friend. "I swear. He's been carrying that book, what's it – What to Expect When You're Expecting – _everywhere_. He probably has it highlighted and post-it covered, I don't wonder. I think he memorizes passages at night so he can torture me the next day. You know what? He would've made a great college professor. One of the douche-y ones that is perpetually lecturing you about _something._"

"I'm just being prepared," Percy's voice carries into the living room.

"Percy! You're not the one expecting so it makes _no sense_ for you to be reading it!" She huffs and continues in a conversational tone. "I think he's considering buying the audio book so he can listen to it in transit to work too." She rolls her eyes. "If he's this overprotective when the babies actually come, the twins can look forward to spending the rest of their life in a human-sized glass jar."

"I think it's cute," Chris says from the kitchen.

"Says you," Annabeth retorts and Clarisse agrees.

..o..

(There were the ordinary moments.)

"Taxes are due tomorrow," Annabeth says absentmindedly while flipping through a Home Décor magazine.

"So taxes are due tomorrow," Percy replies blithely while heating a microwavable dinner.

She looks up. "Okay, that was supposed to be the hint for you to buckle down and do the paperwork."

"I don't understand taxes," he says by way of pushing them off on her. "You'd do a better job at them."

"Thanks for the flattery, but that's not getting you out of it."

"Come on," he whines.

She shoots him a _look_.

He sighs and sits down next to her with the carton of bacon macaroni and cheese. "Compromise. Group effort."

She appears to consider it. "Deal."

"Since I helped save the world and all – the world, including the IRS – I should be exempt from taxes."

Annabeth pushes the magazine off to the side and steals a bite of his food. "You use that excuse for everything, including not having to go out and buy the groceries."

"It's a good excuse!"

..o..

(And there were extraordinary moments.)

"Quick," he murmurs. "The kids are all asleep. _At the same time._ This is the best luck we've had in weeks." He's wearing a loose tee and jeans, barefoot on the linoleum floor.

Annabeth sets up the baby monitor. "Shhh. Do you think it's on?" She puts it up to her ear and then to Percy's so he can sample it.

"We live in a five-room apartment. Do you _really_ think we won't be able to hear them without the monitor?"

It's her turn to be protective now. "Yes. Bad things could happen and we could miss it!"

"Bad things are guaranteed to happen if you don't come with your husband to the bedroom _right now._" He puts his hand on her waist and steers her out of the kitchen. She snatches the baby monitor off the counter just before it goes out of reach.

Her hair in a frazzled bun and a big, loose maternity long-sleeve clashes with her dark blue teddy bear pajama pants. "I feel completely un-sexy."

"Well, that's why you have me. So I can make you feel sexy again," he says as he shuts the door with one foot.

By the time one of the boys starts sniffling on the monitor, Percy has succeeded in the task, of course, and Annabeth can't complain.

..o..

(But they could not leave _everything _behind. No demigod ever could.)

"Annabeth, unlock the door."

"No!"

"It's 1:30 am, and it's freezing out here."

"You should've thought of that when you snuck out at nine o'clock."

"I left a note!" And the keys.

"You left _me _too! You didn't say anything before you left."

He exhales, irritated. "Can we have this conversation inside? Please?"

"No."

"Fine. I'm gonna bum at Chris and Clarisse's then for tonight."

There is a pause on the other side of the door, and he knows she's not mad enough to force him onto someone else's couch. The lock slides open and there she is, standing there in her pajamas, looking very angry and very alone. There are dark circles under her eyes and behind her, he sees a half-empty pot of coffee on the counter. Suddenly, he is very sorry indeed. "Can I come in?"

She gestures him in, her movements sharp and jerky. "I wouldn't have opened the door otherwise, would I?" she says shortly.

He steps inside and shuts the door behind him, and they just stand there, sizing each other up. She's the one who breaks the silence first. "Well? What do you have to say for yourself?"

"I'm sorry?"

She huffs. "Yeah, right."

"I am! They called me, saying there was an uprising of empousai at Yancy Academy where there were two new demigods. And it was _Yancy_, and the two kids hadn't a clue what they were doing. They were Athena siblings, and I just couldn't sit here. I was closest to the problem, so I went and fixed it. Honestly, Annabeth, you would've done the same thing. I couldn't help that it was late at night."

She looks close to the verge of tears. "You could've woken me up. I got up at eleven and you weren't here. And it scared the _shit_ out of me, Percy. Why didn't you wake me?"

He glances to the side, which betrays his lie. "I didn't want to disturb you."

"Bullshit. I'm not stupid. We said when we were going to make this work that marriages were built on trust. And we said that we weren't going to let the complications of the mythological world screw everything up."

He is at a loss for what to say. She's right, of course, but she just doesn't understand.

"Why don't you trust me?" she asks.

"I trust you more than anybody," he says with complete, heartfelt truth.

"Liar."

The knot inside his stomach tightens. "I didn't want to bring you into it because…"

"Because?"

"Because I didn't want you to get hurt!" he bursts out. "Look, we've come so far, and we went through a ton of stuff. By chance or fate or sheer luck whatever it was, nothing ever happened, and we're here." He points over at the bedrooms, where twin boys and a new baby daughter slumber without any knowledge of monsters or gods or anything of Percy and Annabeth's dangerous world, yet anyway. He swallows. "I can't help thinking that one day – one day we might not be so lucky. And if anybody's luck runs out, it can't be yours. It has to be mine."

Annabeth stills, as motionless as a pillar of salt.

He waits for her to find her composure again, and when she does, he expects her to berate him some more or to cry. He finds he doesn't really like either option, but he's going to man up and take it anyway.

"You idiot," she says softly.

_That_, though, wasn't what he was expecting. "What?" he says inanely.

"When we were young, you wouldn't have been afraid to let me come along. I helped you. We helped each other."

"That's different. We're grown now." The subtext doesn't need to be said. They have gained so much. There is much more to lose.

Finally, she steps into his embrace and his arms circle up around her. "Together," she murmurs into his shoulder. "You have to promise to let us do it together. You don't get to make that decision to leave me out, no matter what you think. Get it, Seaweed Brain?"

So he promises her, but not without hesitation. And even when she falls asleep in the crook of his arm, warm under the covers, a shadow lays over his heart, one he can't entirely ignore.

..o..

(Even so, others could leave them behind.)

When Annabeth is forty-three, she sees the first shadow of what is to come. She sees it in Clarisse's face during the funeral wake. Clarisse, the daughter of Ares, the killer of a drakkon, is not afraid to cry.

It happened so suddenly on New Year's Day no less – a car accident. The drunk driver smashed into his car from the side. Chris was pronounced dead on the scene. The other man was whisked away to the hospital in a coma. And Clarisse? In that instant, Clarisse's life shattered with Chris's ribcage.

When Annabeth crawls into bed with Percy, bone-tired, too tired even to weep, she cannot sleep.

Percy presses his lips into her hair.

"Just like that," she whispers. "He was at the party four days ago. He was there – smiling and happy."

"I know."

Obituaries are nothing, Annabeth thinks as she soaks the pillowcase with warm tears. They're a birth and a death. They forget everything in between.

..o..

(The in-between was not always so easy.)

Sometimes, he finds her side of the bed cold and empty in the middle of the night, a dim light slipping under the door. He follows it and finds her sitting in the kitchen with a glass of wine. He taps her on the shoulder, startles her.

"Hey," he says.

She looks at him briefly, dull eyes, dull heart. "It's constraining," she says.

"What is?"

"Being governed by fate. Some people don't know it, but we know the three old women making our lives for us."

He is reminded of the time when the Fates let his life pass before his eyes.

She doesn't even look at him, staring at the rise and fall of liquid in the wine glass as she swirls it slowly.

Standing there at her side while she is seeing something he cannot, he doesn't know what to say. He knows she is thinking about Luke, like she does sometimes when she cannot sleep. And at those times, he cannot pull her back from the deep, black cavern she has fallen into. She is lost.

Hands empty, he goes back to bed and waits for her to return to him.

..o..

(Yet the in-between could be the best part.)

"My vision is going," he bemoans as they sit in bed in the glow of the lamp on the night stand.

Annabeth lowers the book she's reading. "Yeah, it looks like you're getting on in years. Better embrace the old age, babe."

"This is not funny," he says, glaring at her while she hides a smile behind the pages.

"I'm not laughing."

"Yeah, right. To think, if I had picked immortality all of those years ago, I wouldn't have to be taking arthritis medication now. It's so un-manly when my joints creak."

"You're such a crybaby."

"It's completely unfair. You don't look old at all."

She laughs and pecks him on the cheek. "Thank you. If it makes you feel better, I think you are extremely attractive with bifocals."

He perks up. "Really?"

"Yes, really."

"Prove it," he says, and it effectively ends _that _conversation.

..o..

(For in the long years to pass, there was always laughter.)

After almost thirty years, they still play Apples to Apples on Christmas after they open the presents. Which is kind of ridiculous in a family of dyslexics, but it got the kids to like words in the beginning, and after that it just became tradition.

"Ha!" Annabeth crows. "One more pair for me. Take that, Seaweed Brain."

"Mom, stop it, seriously," Nathan, the sandy blond twin says, rolling his eyes. He's a sophomore in college, way too old for this kind of shenanigans, but he plays along anyway. "Nobody wants to cringe through your cheesy names for Dad."

"Yeah, no kidding," Jordan echoes, the light-brown haired twin. When they were younger, they used to complain about how uncool it was that they were fraternal instead of identical so they could play all the awesome pranks other twins did on TV.

"Oh shut up, you two," Annabeth says. "You're just jealous that I'm winning." Complacently, she adds _Risky_ and _Trailer Parks_ to her stash.

"She's on her competitive streak again," Nathan says, grabbing a new card from the deck.

"Great," Jordan deadpans. "Jeez, Sofie, how come you're always picking Mom's card? You're cheating, I know it. What'd she bribe you with this time?"

Sofie, the fifteen-year-old kid sister, tosses her long, dark brown hair. "I'm not cheating. Maybe you just suck at this game."

"I knew I had a daughter for a reason," Annabeth says, collecting _Smiley_ and _Tobacco Companies_.

They drink hot chocolate, squabble, and play until Percy and Annabeth are tied. Sofie is third, and Nathan and Jordan are dead last, as usual. "Last round."

The green card reads _Touchy-Feely_ so everyone knows this is going to be the best round of the bunch. Nathan and Jordan have blatantly begun exchanging cards under the table, but they're so far behind that nobody even bothers to reprimand them. Sofie is judging the last round, glass-green eyes sharp as she rolls them at her brothers.

Smugly, Annabeth slides her card, face-down, into the pile. "I've got this in the bag."

Beside her, Percy winks at his daughter and puts his choice down. The red cards are shuffled. Annabeth bumps him with her shoulder. "Get ready to lose again."

"Don't speak too soon, Wise Girl."

Sofie picks up the red cards and compares them. Halfway through, her usual serious, efficient self cracks down the center, and she begins laughing hysterically, almost to the point of tears. Nathan and Jordan stop what they're doing and stare at her. "Uh, has she gone nuts?"

Sofie flips the card that she has chosen, shoulders heaving with giggles. "This one," she says. "Definitely this one."

The red card says _Helen Keller._

"Ha!" Percy shouts, snatching _Touchy-Feely_ and _Helen Keller._ "What now? I win!"

Annabeth jumps up. "That is—that is—" Her face reddens.

"I'm the new Apples to Apples champion! Eat it!"

Annabeth makes a wild swipe at the cards in his hands, and he dances out of the room gloating. "Oh, no you don't," she threatens as she chases him into the kitchen, and they run around and around the counter.

Sofie patiently puts the cards left back into the box.

Nathan shakes his head at Jordan. "And this is why we should never play this game, ever again, at Christmas."

"But you know we will," Sofie says as she replaces the lid.

"Not unless I burn that box right now in the fireplace. Mom and Dad totally don't have to know."

"You can't burn tradition," she replies matter-of-factly. "Trust me, I've tried. This has to be the sixth game our family has gone through."

Jordan scratches his head. "Yeah, I was wondering why this game looked so new. Anyway, _Touchy-Feely_ and _Helen Keller_ are going to be completely demolished by the time the parentals stop playing tag in the kitchen, so we were probably going to have to get a new one no matter what."

..o..

And like this, laughter and love threaded through the fabric of their lives, and things were as good as they'd ever been. Percy and Annabeth were grateful. Nothing could halt the march of time, but as it went on, peace never seemed so sweet.

So they lived like that, the heroes of Olympus, in the small moments year after year, and their family of five turned into a family of six, then seven, then nine. Their hair grayed and their laugh lines deepened, and the Fates were spinning, spinning – spinning their life threads long and colorful and thick, waiting for the exact right moment to pull out the shears and cut.

Annabeth and Percy waited too, all the way up until the very special day she woke up, turned to kiss him in the morning the way she always did and realized that her husband had forgotten their fortieth anniversary.

..o..

It is the worst way she can imagine him going. Alzheimers. He won't even remember her in the end. She can't get over how cruel that is. It starts with small things, like forgetting birthdays of friends and the phone numbers of the twins. Then, inevitably, it gets worse. He forgets the song they danced to at their wedding. He forgets her birthday.

She pulls out photo albums and home videos to keep his memories as fresh as possible. But deterioration is inevitable.

He forgets his favorite color.

Finally, he forgets what the apple of his eye, Sofie, looks like. Dark hair and green eyes, she has inherited his every gene. How can he forget? But he points at the photo of her when she got married and says, "Who's she? That's a pretty face in a pretty dress." Sofie lives all the way across the country in San Francisco, but even so—the Percy she knew would never forget his daughter's wedding day.

In a way, Annabeth is perversely glad that Percy falls ill of heart disease two years later, because it means she can measure out the last of their time together, instead of if he dropped dead in two seconds of cardiac arrest. This, she thinks sadly, is much better than Chris Rodriguez.

Besides, she wouldn't be able to bear it if he couldn't remember to kiss her goodbye on her deathbed. But she can be his memory for him, in these last few days.

There is so much to say, even after a lifetime. There is never enough time, she realizes. There is so much she wants to tell him, if he'll even hear it, and so much she wants to do that will never be done and just –

"Percy," she says.

He stirs from the bed, gazing at her listlessly. She is tired of searching for recognition in his eyes, so much that she has stopped trying. So now, she just talks and hopes that some of it, even a little bit, is registering somewhere, somehow.

She puts a hand on his deeply wrinkled forehead. "How are you doing today?" She looks out the window where the sunshine is impossibly bright. It is a wonderful day for the beach. "Nathan, Jordan, Sofie, and the kids are flying out here tomorrow. They miss you, sweet. It'll—it'll be hard for them, I know. I didn't want them to come. But they insisted. And you know our kids. They never take no for an answer. That's probably our fault." She smoothes out a few gray hairs spilling over his hairline.

"I miss you too," she confesses. "And I keep thinking about what I'm going to do when you're gone. The doctors kept telling me to take you to a nursing home so I wouldn't have to watch you all of the time, but I couldn't do that. Put the hero of the world in a nursing home?" She laughs and it echoes in the empty hospital room, making her heart ache. She quiets. "I know you don't remember that. But you would laugh too, if you did."

He doesn't say anything.

"Well, anyway. Gods, I don't even know what to say. It'll be lonely. But I can do it. I'm a tough girl. I'm not long for the ways either, but don't tell the kids that. You'll just have to be a little patient when you get down there first. Don't take the E-Z Death line. And save a spot for me. It's probably cheating to budge, but I hate waiting in lines."

She takes a shaky breath to staunch the tears. It would be stupid to cry in front of him. He wouldn't recognize them anyway. He might not even be sad, and that would break her heart. Slowly, slowly, his brain and heart are deteriorating. The doctors say his body is strong, but what is the use of a strong body without a brain to remember and a heart to love? And that's why they die, she supposes. Because everything that is important withers away.

She is thinking this as she strokes his hand, the disconnected thoughts coming in streams, because she can't concentrate or focus anymore. Perhaps she's getting sick too.

The clock on the wall reads 4:45 pm, and she has fifteen minutes before she has to go. It's the worst part of her day, leaving him in the hospital. It was bad enough before, having to live with Percy's empty shell at home, but now, when she goes home, it is just _empty_. "Hey," she says, squeezing his hand. "It's almost time. So, I mean, this is morbid, but before it's – too late – let me just say everything I need to say, okay? You can just – listen. And try to remember. Please, please, try to remember this one thing. It's important."

She shifts and the crisp white bed sheets rustle under her. "A long time ago, we talked about what we would do, when we pass away from here. You said then that you wanted to try for the Isles of the Blest, because you wanted a challenge. At the time, I said it was a dumb idea, because what if our next life was shit or something and we ended up being murderers; we'd be throwing away Elysium." She glances outside where the trail of sunlight leaves the world in orange shimmers. "I thought about it, because I have a lot of time to think when I'm at home – it kind of sucks, Percy. I never thought I would get tired of analyzing, but I am. You're not there to tell me to stop. But I thought about what you said for a long time. I wouldn't leave something like this up to random chance, an impossible probability." She blinks away a wave of regret. "But I think – I think whatever happens – it's fate. We're fate, I mean."

She swallows.

"And if the Fates have anything in store for us that is like this life, which I _believe_ they do, there is nothing to stop us from trying. Because you and I, we're meant to be." She smiles sadly at him. "You probably believed it back then, but you know how I'm shit at listening sometimes. I guess that's why I'm doing the talking and you're still doing the listening. And besides, I would never want to deprive you of a challenge, if that's what it is." She pauses, collecting her original point. "So yeah. What I'm trying to say is, I want you to pick rebirth, okay?" She cups his sunken cheek in her palm. "And when I follow you, in a day or a year, I'll pick it too. We just – have to remember to find each other next time."

She falls quiet then and listens to his breathing and heartbeat until it entwines with hers, creating one more moment to live in. At last, the nurse comes in and tells her it's time to go. This time, Annabeth knows, somewhere in her gut like a sixth sense, that this is the last time.

He is at an end.

So she leans down and brushes her lips across his forehead, whispers fiercely, "Please find me, Seaweed Brain."

His weak fingers somehow find their way to her wrist and curl around it. And even though he is too feeble to say a word, to even murmur her name, she knows he has heard her.

There, at that instant, is where their story comes to a close.

At the end – waiting for the beginning.

..o..

_And the Fates too waited, to spin them new threads, holding off for just the right moment, just the right –_

* * *

**Author's note:** (I'm sorry. I realize that this is the fourth death scene I have written for the two of them, and I swear I don't spend my nights awake thinking of ways to murder them. Also, don't worry about The End of You and Me. It will be updated in due time and is not abandoned. And for the record, I won NaNoWriMo and have a new, original manuscript on my hands.)

I am celebrating, because this story brings my number of PJO fan fics to ten. It has officially trumped all of my other fandoms in number of stories written. Thanks for the support, everyone. I am deeply grateful to anyone who has either read, reviewed, or favorited. I think I will stay in this fandom for some time yet.

Be prepared for an absolutely massive Part Two. Here is a preview:

_"Well, that guy over there is a real ass," Rose says, glancing over. _

_"Surprise, surprise," Shondra drawls. "Best of luck. At least the boy's cute." She nudges Rose._

_"Oh, please," Rose replies. "It's been a long time since I've ever looked at some boy, and I promise you, that one is not my type. Besides, he's probably married to some eighteen-year-old sorority girl with huge implants who asks for a new car each week. Those guys. They always have trophy wives."_

Reviews are appreciated!


	2. Part Two

**Author's Note:** Yeah, I was completely not kidding about the size of this chapter.

Three

by

Icy Roses

* * *

**Part Two**

* * *

"_En ma fin gît mon commencement."_** – Mary Queen of Scots**

...

The alarm clock rings loud – once, twice, three times – until a hand comes down on it with crushing force and it falls silent abruptly. The red digits on the screen read _2:30 am_. Half-asleep still, a thin figure crawls out of the crisp, bleached hotel sheets and stumbles into the shower on a typical morning. She turns the knob all the way to the right, and the water blasts freezing cold. She curses and shivers under the steady stream. She learned a long time ago that this was the only surefire way to fully wake herself up in the morning.

By the time she steps out and wraps a towel around herself, her numb fingers fumble around uselessly with the tiny bottle of lotion on the counter and goose bumps have risen on her arms and legs. She towels off quickly, efficiently, and throws her few possessions into one carpetbag. She buttons up her navy blue uniform with blue and red double "u" pin perched neatly on the left side and slips into the matching business skirt that falls just above the knee with neat slits on the side.

By 2:50, she's checked out of the hotel, has hailed a taxi and is sitting in the backseat, applying mandatory makeup with a pocket mirror and heading to LaGuardia Airport in New York City.

There is nothing glamorous about this life, but Rose Parker was never one for glamour to begin with. That is why – she supposes – she has ended up in this dump of a job, always in limbo between day and night and between one continent and another. For Rose suspects she spends more time over the Atlantic than she does on solid ground.

It was never in her life plan to be a flight attendant. Her father wanted to be a poet and always harbored dreams of being the next T.S. Eliot. Those dreams were the ones that first attracted Rose's mother, Marie. They had a whirlwind romance of two years that produced a trip around the world (because they had nowhere to live, so better to have adventure, right?) and a girl named Rose Florence Parker, her middle name a remembrance of their favorite city. But those dreams of her father, those fickle, teasing dreams, never put a roof over their heads or food on the table. And eventually, those dreams drove away Marie, who learned to be a practical-minded woman – she married a French millionaire and left the life of dreaming and poverty behind. She left Rose behind too. So Rose grew up with her father, who never knew quite how to be a father or a provider.

She was young and foolish, and she thought if she fell in love (like her mother) it would solve all of her problems. But all it did was leave her pregnant at twenty-three with a broken heart and no money. She hadn't learned Marie's most important trick, and that was not to fall in love with a man, but to fall in love with riches. Her boyfriend, Ricky, was poor anyway, and never provided any child support checks, so then it was three mouths to feed (including her father) and no one with a job to do it.

So pretty blonde Rose, who had gone to college on hefty student loans for a sophisticated double-major in Italian and French, whose dream it was to be an ambassador or a translator, shoved all of those dreams in a box along with her sophisticated degree, and trained to be a flight attendant. Those extra languages bought her a stipend and the chance to be an international stewardess instead of a domestic one. More money – all for more money. All for her five-year-old daughter Allie, who attends kindergarten in Seattle and lives in her father's shoddy apartment. Rose pays the rent. Rose pays for school. Rose pays for shots and groceries. Her salary, at about $40,000 a year, scrapes by. She scrapes here and there and tries to save, and by and by, it gets them along. But she holds no delusions about the future. There is no government job on the horizon. This is not a rut. This is real life. And her real life involves keeping a roof over Allie and her father's heads and food in their bellies.

As she steps into the airplane and greets her fellow flight attendants for the morning, all of them faking bright eyes and cheery smiles, she sees similar stories and knows most of them did not choose this life either. Nobody holds stupid, romantic sentiments about traveling the skies.

As for the passengers who stop her and gush about how exciting her job must be, Rose considers them half-wits. Nobody likes getting up at 2:30 am and pretending to be chipper to rude-ass customers who are too stupid to figure out what row is clearly printed on their ticket. Rose hates holding cranky babies while airsick mothers barf into the paper bags provided. She hates it when people mill about the aisles when the "please put on your seatbelts" light is clearly on, and she has a hard time believing everyone is having a bladder emergency specifically at that time. She especially hates when sleepy old men take forever to order between the menu options – _dammit, there's only two choices, chicken or beef, so just make your fucking decision already!_

But what she hates the most is catering to the first-class passengers, whose lives of wealth and privilege, she can only imagine. She can't help but wonder what her life would be like if she were in their place. She hates herself for letting her mind wander where it can never go, but she can't help it. And besides, there are enough first-class passengers who are complete dicks that the flight attendants secretly term them "rich little shits" behind the curtain.

And today, it is Rose Parker's (bad) luck that the senior flight attendant, Shondra, pulls her aside with cocked eyebrow, "Rotation's come around, honey. It's your turn with the rich little shits for the duration of the flight," she says in her best service voice.

"Fuck," Rose pronounces, and Shondra is too sympathetic to tell her to curb her tongue.

..o..

Eric Sorenson is running horribly late. It's absolutely not his fault that the hotel screwed up his morning wake-up call, and he ended up arriving at the airport forty-five minutes later than he meant to.

After baggage check detains him for having an over-heavy suitcase, and he pays the required fee because he's not about to throw any of his possessions away – not after having a bit of a spat with the smart-mouthed forty-year-old lady over the counter; _entitled plebians_ – of course, there's something that makes the metal detector go off. In his haste, he had forgotten about the metal plate in his skull they had just put in three months ago. He hopes the metal detector hasn't fucked up his brain, but there's no time for that. The security guards are skeptical, but they let him through. By that time, it's already 5:44 am by his expensive Rolex watch, and the time for boarding is about to pass in exactly one minute.

"Shit!" he mutters as he elbows through the crowd. How can the airport possibly be so crowded this early in the morning? LaGuardia Airport – it has to be one of his least favorite in the world, and he has been to many an airport in his line of work.

He rushes up to the desk, where a middle-aged, slightly balding man is waiting to see his ticket. He pulls it out of his pocket, a bit wrinkled but otherwise undamaged and hands it over.

"I'm sorry, sir, but boarding time is over and the tunnel has closed. Now we can give you a half-refund or set you on the next flight but it will probably be in the economy cabin—"

Eric brings a crushing fist down on the desk. "No! I need to get on this flight. Now. If you will kindly let me through the door, I will be seated and the plane can be on its way."

The ticket man adjusts his spectacles as if Eric's outburst has disturbed his face. "I'm sorry, sir," he repeats. "Rules are rules. I cannot open—"

"I knew it," Eric snaps, running a hand through his disheveled black hair. "United has the worst service anywhere. Do you have any idea how much hassle I have gone through to get to this point?"

"I apologize if the airport has been of inconvenience to you, but United Airlines has nothing to do with the procedures prior to entering the terminal area."

"Whatever. That's not going to stop me from buying Delta next time. I'm going to drag this entire corporation to court. Seriously, if you don't let me in right now, I'm going to hire the biggest lawyer in the country – and trust me, I can afford it – and I am going to file the biggest fucking lawsuit against your ass that—"

One of the crew cabin members from the plane emerges from the tunnel and whispers something into the ticket man's ear. The ticket man nods, completely unfazed. "Well, it seems like the flight has been delayed for an hour due to last minute check-ups, so in this case, I will allow you to board late." He examines the ticket and hands it back to Eric, who is slightly taken aback by this quick turn in fortunes, but snaps his mouth shut and shoves the ticket into his back pocket, marching into the plane without a second glance. Damn airport personnel. He hates every last one of them and if they get paid a quarter of what he makes, it would be way too much for the kind of service they offer.

..o..

Luckily, the first-class cabin is small this time around, so Rose only has to cater to sixteen rich little shits instead of twenty or thirty. At worst, she has wobbled through the aisles with two bottles of wine, four sandwiches, a shrimp cocktail, and a martini.

Shondra mouths _I'm sorry_ from the front of the plane, where she is having a serious conversation with the captain. Rose helps the passengers settle and load their suitcases into the correct overhead compartments. She overhears a couple squabbling about who gets the window seats, and she discreetly rolls her eyes. It only matters if you can see the ground falling away for ten minutes if you're under ten years old. Full grown adults can really amaze her with their childish behavior sometimes.

Since the flight is delayed for an hour, when it finally takes to the runway and lifts off, people are bitching up and down the place. So it's snack time to appease the masses, and she wheels the cart down the spacious first-class aisles and asks the oily businessmen what they want. Nine times out of ten, it's someone dressed to the tee, with a permanent expression of smelling something awful etched on their face. The other time, it's the person with an ear-to-ear grin who has gotten an unexpected upgrade or spent their savings on the only time he'll ever ride first class, and he has a billion questions to ask – how does this work? – and orders everything on the menu.

So it gives her a bit of a pause when she stops in front of a man in the second row. His black hair is sticking up in the back, and it seriously looks like he has just rolled out of bed. His suit is wrinkled and his white collar isn't turned out properly. He doesn't even bother to look at her when he says, "Well? What are you staring at?"

Before she can stop herself, she blurts out, "Your tie is in your shirt." Because it is – the tail end stuck in the space between two buttons. Honestly, it's pretty dumb-looking and completely unfitting for a person of first-class.

He turns to her, scowling. "Is that what they pay stewardesses to do these days, criticize passengers' clothing?"

His eyes are a startling green, and for some reason, it sends a shiver down her spine. Not like she hasn't ever met anyone with green eyes before – Ricky had green eyes, for instance – but something about _these_. She shakes it off. "The proper term is 'flight attendant,'" she hears herself saying.

"Yeah, whatever you're called." He fixes his tie. "Say, have I seen you somewhere before?"

Privately, she thinks that people like him are a dime a dozen, and she certainly does not go out of her way to meet douchebags. Obviously, she voices none of this aloud and only shakes her head. "I don't think so."

"Huh."

"Can I get you something?" she asks him, trying not to get derailed by his attitude. It's one of the first lessons new flight attendants learn: don't let the passengers get to you. Nobody wants to see a flight attendant lose her cool on the plane.

"Um, yeah," he says, checking his pager. It's basically like talking on a cell phone while checking out, and it drives her nuts. How can he not at least have the courtesy to look at her while asking her to bring him stuff? "Can I get a bottle of Grey Goose vodka, please?"

"Of course." In the beginning, she used to tell people how much it would cost. Now, she realizes the first-class passengers don't glare at her because they already know, but because they don't care. She wonders what it would be like to order whatever the hell she wanted and get piss-drunk on a plane. Gods, she hopes he doesn't get drunk on this flight. She hates dealing with wasted passengers.

She wheels off and finishes the aisle. Going behind the curtain, she catches Shondra, who winks at her. "How's it going so far?"

"Well, that guy over there is a real ass," she says, glancing over. Second thing you learn: never point at passengers while you're talking shit about them.

"Surprise, surprise," Shondra says. "Best of luck. At least the boy's cute." She nudges Rose.

"Oh, please," Rose replies. "It's been a long time since I've ever looked at some boy, and I promise you, that one is not my type. Besides, he's probably married to some eighteen-year-old sorority girl with huge implants who asks for a new car each week. Those guys. They always have trophy wives."

Shondra chuckles warmly. "All right, sweetie. Aren't you Little Miss Practical? Well, I'll leave you to your hot catch then." She returns to the main cabins with her cart of water, orange juice, and soda pop.

Rose gets the bottle of Grey Goose with a glass and a sandwich for someone else. She gives the sandwich to an older man and puts the glass on the mini table in front of Mr. Messed-Up Tie. She unscrews the cap and pours some for him. He actually looks up this time. "Thanks, um"—he checks her nametag—"Rose." She gets the impression that he has noticed she is kind of attractive for the first time – or that her rack is kind of attractive – and is about to hit on her in the leery way that bored, rich passengers do. She doesn't buy this bullshit.

"You're welcome, sir," she says primly. "Let me know if you need anything else."

Propping himself up in the chair and taking a sip of vodka, he puts a hand on her arm before she can go. "Actually, I do," he says.

"Yes?" She pulls her arm away. She is not a fan of touchy-feely people.

He doesn't seem to notice. "How long is this flight going to be?"

"Seventeen hours until we land in Venice."

"Oh, excellent," he grumbles, putting his feet up. "I hate these damn long flights. Maybe you can entertain me on the way there."

She can't help but be offended by this, and even though Rose Parker is a very sensible, tongue-biting kind of human being, she says, "Sir, I am not paid to be your fool. I am paid to give you drinks and move your luggage and get you food. You have movies for that, all right? Also, the correct way to hit on women? Not act like a whiny bitch." Immediately after she says what she does, she regrets it. Casting a hasty glance around for supervising personnel and noticing none, she collects herself.

Luckily for her, Mr. Vodka-Drinking Messed-Up Tie cocks an eyebrow and hides a smile. "Well, then. I could have you reported for that, you know."

He's goading her! She attempts to hide the icy finger of fear sliding down her spine. She cannot lose her job. If he reports her for misconduct, she is done for. But she also can't seem to keep her big, fat mouth shut against this guy. Between flirty, rude customers and getting three hours of sleep, civility is the last thing on her mind. "Fine. I hope that makes you feel better as a human being."

"Now, see here, Rose"—and she detests that they are on a first-name basis now—"I come onto this plane minding my own business, you insult my clothes, and then you accuse me of trying to hit on you. I don't know where all of this hostility is coming from, but it's certainly not because I am being a, uh, 'whiny bitch,'" he says, making air quotes. "Besides, I am entitled be that way if I so choose. I paid for a ticket."

She stands there dumbly. "Okay."

"Okay," he says, finishing the glass and pouring himself another. "I'm glad we got that all settled, then." He smiles at her. "You have to be one of the most interesting flight attendants I've ever met. And if I weren't afraid of getting reported for sexual harassment – since you seem to think I'm assaulting you or something – I would tell you that you're quite pretty."

What a jerk. She stiffens and stands straighter. Right now, she is thinking two things. One – he's probably not going to report her for misconduct, which is good. And two – he's also having way too much fun with messing with her, and she'll be damned if she spends the rest of this flight exchanging verbal spars with a tipsy, horny businessman. She decides to quit while she's ahead.

"Well, if you need anything, don't hesitate to ask," she says formally, ending the conversation. She is tempted to do a little mock curtsy but thankfully manages to hold her snarky side back.

"Oh, I will," he says with a grin. He keeps his word too. Throughout the seventeen-hour flight, every time he needs anything at all, he makes a point to ask for Rose and none of the other eleven flight attendants on board. She is so, so tempted to poison his second bottle of vodka but figures that would be going over the top. So instead, she settles for spitting in his steak, which makes her feel better long enough to not accidentally taser him for the entire trip.

..o..

And besides complaining endlessly to Shondra for the next few flights and laughing about what a great story it makes, that's supposed to be the end of it.

But things rarely go according to plan in Rose's little world, as evidenced by two months later, when she spots him boarding the same flight from LaGuardia to Marco Polo Airport and still on first-class. "Shit!" she says, hiding behind Kelly. "It's Mr. Vodka-Drinking Messed-Up Tie!"

Shondra shambles over with her knuckles perched on her hip. "Girl, what are you doing?"

"It's _him_," she hisses. "The guy I told you about!"

"Oh, the one you secretly have a crush on?" Shondra teases.

"Okay, really, Shondra? The only reason I would ever sleep with him is so I can smother him with a pillow when he's asleep. Please, _please_ don't make me do first-class this time. I swear, if he sees me again, he's going to be just as much of an ass as he was last time, and this time I might actually hurt him. And get fired." She's still hiding behind Kelly, who gives her a bemused look and sweeps off, leaving her naked to the world and completely open to Mr. Vodka-Tie, as she has abbreviated him in her head.

"Be an adult, Rose," Shondra says, emphasizing the first syllable. "He probably doesn't remember what you look like anyway. You're just some blonde flight attendant he tried to get a chance with. He probably does it with every waitress and every cashier."

"Please?"

Shondra gives her a lingering, considering look. "All right. You can do the back cabins today, but you owe me. I hate dealing with those rich little shits too."

Rose is so relieved that she almost kisses the ground where Shondra stands. "Thank you," she says, rushing off breathlessly toward the back. "I won't forget this!"

"Yeah, you better not," Shondra says after her.

This plan works fairly well for half of the flight. After the first meal, most of the passengers pass out for a couple of hours because there's nothing better to do on a plane besides sleep – Rose wishes at times that she were allowed to crash in the aisles, but she does her check-ups like a walking zombie because she can't. Merely because the main booth is up front near the cockpit, she is forced to walk through first-class. Except, it seems as if Mr. Vodka-Tie is asleep, so she snatches this opportunity to whip through.

No such luck, though. "Hey, you!" he whispers. The lights are dimmed, and everyone else is slumbering. Why can't he slumber too?

With dread, she turns around. "Yes, sir?" she says blandly, trying not to betray any hint of familiarity, but he obviously remembers her. It's not _that_ strange. Some of the more frequent fliers between the US and Italy know her, but most of them are not that obnoxious about it.

"You're here. Rose, right?"

"Yeah," she says. "It's kind of my job to be here. On this flight."

"Well, I'll be damned," he says. "Never thought I'd see you again."

"Ditto," she replies, and not entirely in a nice way.

He beckons her closer, and she considers telling him that he should ask another flight attendant if he wants a bottle of Grey Goose again. But she approaches him anyway. It's her _job_. He extends his hand. "Eric Sorenson," he says. "I feel weird with you calling me 'sir' all of the time. It sounds like a derogatory term coming out of your mouth anyway."

Slowly, resentfully, she shakes his hand. She really couldn't give a damn what his name is.

"And of course, you are Rose Parker, the flight attendant. Look, you can calm down. I'm not going to report you for misconduct, seriously. I just want to get to know you better."

"Why?"

"You seem like a nice girl."

"I called you a whiny bitch!"

He wrinkles his nose. "Do we really want to revisit that? Come on, let's start over."

Okay, she thinks at this point, _you're not my ex-boyfriend, so there is absolutely no need to use those three words, "Let's start over."_ She sighs. "Really, sir – _Eric_ – it's not part of my job description to be friends with you."

"Can't we be friends for the sake of being friends?"

She can't understand him, and she really can't understand why he's so hell-bent on being her friend. Well, she has an inkling, and it has something to do with the fact that he wants to ask her out on a date, but she decides to give him the benefit of the doubt for the time being, if only for the sake of her own sanity. "Yeah, sure," she mutters.

He kicks back in his seat, settling into a more comfortable position. "So, Rose, why don't you tell me why you decided to become a flight attendant?"

"Um, why don't you tell me why you're on this flight _again_? Are you stalking me?"

He laughs, and it actually doesn't sound horrible. He has a pretty nice laugh. So maybe he's improved since he stomped onto the plane with a tucked-in collar and bed head. "No," he says emphatically, "I work for the communications department of an auto company, so I have to fly to Italy a lot for meetings with the Italian branch. And I have frequent flier miles. They always pay for me to fly first-class. We made the switch to United Airlines for cost reasons, I think."

"Oh," she says. She was right about him being a businessman.

"You haven't answered my question. I answered yours."

"It's a job," she shrugs. "It pays the bills. And I am fluent in Italian and French, so I get a stipend for doing international European flights," she can't help but add. She has few things in her life to be proud of, and she feels crass for boasting, but she is pretty proud of this aspect. She is not some bimbo without an education.

"Impressive." He scratches his head. "See, that wasn't so painful, was it?"

She doesn't answer.

"You've only worked for United, am I right?"

She nods, wondering where this is going.

"Yeah, so I guess I can't have met you before then," he says, sounding puzzled. "You must have one of those faces."

"Excuse me?"

He holds up his hands. "Relax. I meant one of those faces that are common. Wait, no, that still didn't come out right."

She bristles. "_Goodbye, Eric._ Nice to meet you," she says, without meaning a word of it. "I'm not catering to first-class this time, so please talk to Shondra if you need anything."

As she walks off angrily, he says, "I still think you're pretty. I think you would look nice with long hair!"

It's a comment that strikes her oddly even as he goes out of sight. She did have long hair once, back when she was young and dating Ricky. But then, when he left, she decided to cut all of it off, so it now hangs in short pin curls around her face. When she got hired as a flight attendant, they told her they preferred her to grow it out. Rose refused. She had control over her hair like she had control over nothing else in her life. Besides, having short hair makes her look more professional and less like a college kid. Having short hair causes fewer guys to whistle at her when she walked down the street, something that irritates her to no end. She's a young mother and hasn't thought about dating for years – it's just weird.

She swears that the next time Eric Sorenson shows up in her life, she will have nothing to do with him. If he talks to her, she'll ignore him. How many times can he take the flight to Italy anyway? Perhaps the thing that bothers her most about him is how he thinks she looks familiar. Because if she were to be honest with herself – which she is not going to be – she would admit that he looks familiar too. It leaves an unsettling feeling in the pit of her stomach, as if they had this whole history together that she can't remember. Even alone in her hotel room, she thinks about it, tries to recall something, even scraps, but there's just nothing there.

She's just deluding herself. She lays her cheek gently against the pillow and shuts her eyes. He's just a crazy man, and she's just being crazy with him.

..o..

The next time she sees him on the plane – because of course there's a next time – it's four months later, and she's almost forgotten about him. Almost, but not quite. There he is, sitting smugly in his first-class seat, talking on his cell-phone before the plane takes off. While checking the overhead bins, she passes him, and he hangs up just in time to say conversationally, "My wife, Nigella." He points on the phone.

"That's nice," she says. It only makes her think he is even sleazier than she thought, because he's got a _wife._ What's he doing flirting with her? His wife would probably not be happy about it. Then again, his wife's probably the busty fake platinum blonde she imagined, so she – Nigella – is most likely in it for the money anyway. Not to say that Eric isn't attractive, but – gods, she's going to stop that thought in its tracks right now before it meanders somewhere she doesn't want it to go. "Nigella," she says instead. "That's an interesting name."

"She's British. Met her on one of my business trips."

So now he's looking for a new collection to his harem on his trips to Italy, she thinks snidely. She's not going to fall for this trap. "Okay, Eric?"

"Yeah?"

"We can't talk anymore."

He sets his computer bag down by his customary seat. "Why not? I thought we were having a grand old time."

"You're married. You're annoying beyond all reason. You're totally intrusive. And this is _not my job._ Now, if you need another bottle of vodka or a sandwich or something, I'm completely happy"—and obligated, she thinks—"to get it for you. I'll get you an extra pillow. I'll sing you a fucking lullaby if you need it to fall asleep, but please, _please_, do not pretend like we are anything more than that. Just to make this clear."

Surprisingly, he looks way more downcast than he should have a right to. "Okay. If that's what you want, I'll leave you alone."

It is much less painful than she expected. She is pleasantly happy about this. "Thank you. Really. You're a nice guy, Eric"—lie—"but I would rather maintain a strictly professional relationship."

"I understand," he says rather coldly as he opens a newspaper and begins to read.

As if trying to make a point, he doesn't talk to her or even look at her again. Which is fine with her, really. She should have set him straight a long time ago.

The flight goes seamlessly, except halfway through, she notices a strange hissing that goes on in the fourth row of the second economy cabin. She can't shake it off. There's a slim woman in loose track pants and a sweatshirt with her frizzy red hair tied up. She looks like any other passenger, except Rose is fairly sure that the hissing is coming from her. Either her or her purse, and she is wildly tempted to ask the woman to display the contents of her Gucci bag. As a flight attendant, she is technically allowed to do that. But how stupid would it be if the red-haired woman opens the bag and nothing is in it? Rose is allowed to check suspicious items, but she's not allowed to harass passengers. After just getting disentangled from the whole Eric business, she decides it would be better if she keeps her curiosity to herself.

Of course, she tells herself this, and then goes on to stare at the woman every time she walks by. On the seventh run, the woman gives Rose the evil eye back. "Is there a problem?"

"No," Rose says, embarrassed. "Sorry, ma'am." The woman goes back to reading her novel – The Time Traveler's Wife. Still, she can't shake the feeling that something is wrong. It curls inside of her and gives her insides a squeeze every time she hears the hissing. She gets the impression the woman knows she can hear something but chooses to pretend like nothing is going on.

There is a slight ripple of unease in her head. _Could it be –_ no. It can't. She hasn't seen a peep of the mythological world since she saw a Hyperborean giant on her sixth grade trip to Vancouver with her father. She and the Greek gods have cohabited peacefully for the most part, and she likes to ignore them. It's not like they have any reason to attack _her_ – she's not even a real demigod. Her mother is a daughter of Aphrodite, whose only real power manifested in her idiotic romance with her father, a son of Apollo. Her father, on the other hand, only inherited the power of horrible poetry and false belief in his poetic skill. Rose hasn't inherited a single thing, not one little thing. And she likes it that way. It's not like the Greek gods ever helped her out, so why should she even pretend like she owes them anything?

The hissing is muted throughout the landing, and Rose thinks she might be in the clear. Eric is ignoring her skillfully, either burying his head in the New York Times or his pager. She thinks maybe she went overboard when she vocalized the "annoying beyond all reason" part. She could've gone easier. But it's a bit late for that now.

Between a woman who has an extreme phobia of plane descents – _why is she on a plane without some kind of medication?_ – and a non-English-speaking man getting the lock stuck in the bathroom, Rose is kept busy, so she doesn't have time to worry about pouting first-class passengers.

She is frazzled by the time the plane finally rolls onto the unloading dock in Marco Polo Airport. Venice, at last. She could use a nap.

She is about to down a couple of pills on the sly before everyone gets off so she can fall asleep when she gets to the hotel when the hissing gets louder again. This time, there's no mistaking it. Nobody else seems to notice, or if they do, they're too polite to bring it up. The woman in the track pants has gotten up, tucked her earphones into the side pocket of her Gucci bag, and begun to meander down the aisle toward the aisle. The other disembarking passengers have a kind of weary, dulled out look in their eyes. But her gold irises are sharp and bright, as if she is searching for something. Her knuckles are white around the bag. If she didn't know better, Rose would think the woman has the expression of a terrorist.

Quickly, she pushes past a couple with three children and a cantankerous old man who gives her the finger, trying to press closer to the hissing woman. She's getting closer and closer to the front. Rose pushes aside the curtain frantically and sees that the woman has paused in first-class. Eric straightens, grabbing his computer bag from under the seat. The woman offers him a sharp smile and in a throaty Italian voice begins to introduce herself. He looks confused but shakes her hand. His lips form his name. And right then, the woman catches Rose's eye from the corner. There is a glint of red.

And even though Rose has almost zero experience with Greek monsters, she knows solidly in her gut that this woman is a monster. No question about it. For some reason, she's going after Eric, which means he is a _demigod._ She hears herself whispering the word like it is foreign.

Right before her eyes, the woman and Eric get off the plane together, disappearing from the plane. Eric is talking animatedly, and Rose knows he hasn't got a clue who – or what – this woman is. If she doesn't do anything, he's going to die. He won't ever get on a plane back to the US. And his stinking British wife, _Nigella_, will get a phone call about how her husband has mysteriously been the victim of a random vicious crime spree in Italy, if she even gets a call at all. This is how these kinds of things happen. She may have never attended Camp Half-Blood, but her demigod father taught her enough to keep up her guard. She fingers the bronze dagger she has strapped inside her arm, underneath her uniform. She keeps it there, just in case. Never in her life has she had to use it. Nobody knows she carries it. It is her secret.

And now, she is faced with this horrible dilemma as Eric descends the steps of the plane. She watches through the small, oval window as the woman touches his arm. Rose shivers. She is watching a man walking to his death. She shakes her head. This isn't her concern. She should mind her own business. If he's a demigod, then he knows how to take care of himself.

Right?

Right.

She turns away and fiddles with the cuff of her sleeve – for about three seconds – before sprinting down the aisle and running down the steps of the plane in pumps. Shondra is calling after her, "What the _hell_ do you think you're doing?" but her voice blurred in the background. She is rushing through the crowd, brushing aside the strange looks cast in her direction, searching only for a man with mussed up black hair. For a fearful moment, she thinks she has lost him, but then he is there, several feet in front of her, and still conversing with the woman.

From behind, she grabs his arm. She should probably count herself lucky that he doesn't yell or elbow her in the face. He turns, startled. "Rose?" he asks, amazed. "Uh, what are you doing?"

The red-haired woman is glaring, and her features become distinctly more snakelike for a split second before reverting back to normal. Eric has missed it, of course, but Rose doesn't need any more confirmation that this woman is _bad news._ Thinking fast on her feet, she says, "I – you forgot something on the plane."

He fishes around in his pockets and checks his bags. "Are you sure? Because I don't think—"

She pulls insistently. "I'm sure. You need to come with me right now." She is praying, for the first time in her life, to any god she can think of – Zeus, Apollo, Aphrodite, anyone – to keep the monster at bay and keep them from making a scene in the main terminal of the airport. "Please," she says, looking straight into his strange green eyes, trying to send him a silent message.

He considers her for a moment. "All right."

"I'm sorry, Carmella. It was nice meeting you."

She bares her teeth in a scary smile. "Oh, yes. I agree." The tip of a shockingly red tongue darts out of her mouth and licks her lips lightly. She holds the "s" in her words for just a moment too long.

Rose drags Eric to a more private area – as private as is possible in a bustling international airport. It's where the vending machines are, and it's under a staircase, so the reception is bad. There is no one here and only few people walking by. Unfortunately, it's also rather cramped. She pushes off a wave of claustrophobia and lets out a pent up sigh of relief. "Good. This is good."

"Hey, there," he says. "Are you okay? Because just, I don't know, ten hours ago, you said I was obnoxious and you never wanted to talk to me again. Then, you chase after me in an airport and drag me away from a girl I was about to get a number from? You are seriously starting to get annoying."

"Are you an idiot?" she snaps, angry that this is what she gets for saving his life. "That Italian woman you were about to have a one-night stand with – by the way, you're _married_, douchebag – is a monster."

For a full minute, he stares at her. "Do you know her?"

"Never seen her before in my life."

"Then how do you know she's a horrible person?"

When he says this, it gives her a bit of pause, and it's her turn to be confused. He doesn't know? It's clear that not only did not know the woman is a monster, but he doesn't know about his heritage either. Well, how is she supposed to explain that? "No," she says slowly. "Like a bonafide, eat-your-heart-out monster. Greek mythology? Heard of it?"

"Yes," he says, bemused. "That stuff they force us to learn in high school, about Zeus and Juno and stuff."

"Zeus and Hera," she corrects, even more irritated that he has mixed up the Greek and Roman names.

"Whatever. Is this supposed to be important?"

"Yeah, I would say so," she says.

But before she can explain further, Carmella appears in front of them, her red hair let down and _moving_ on its own. Then, her face pales as if she is about to faint (except she keeps smiling like she is pleased about it) and two-inch long fangs extend past her lip like a vampire. Her eyes turn from gold to red. And she takes a step toward them, all the time with her arms out. "Oh, Eric," she sighs with her pretty accent, "we didn't get a chance to really know each other. This _estupida_ girl got in our way. Why don't we try again, after I finish her off?"

"Uhhh," Rose says, pushing Eric behind her and taking a step back herself. Her brain goes crazy trying to figure out scenarios in which she might _not die._

Meanwhile, the empousa – she recognizes it for what it is now – purrs. "Eric," she lulls softly. "Come with me."

Behind her, Eric makes some kind of weird gurgling noise. "You just stay back there," she says cautiously. "Do not – I repeat – do not listen to her. She's going to suck your blood."

"Like a vampire?" he asks faintly.

"Yeah, like that," she whispers back. "Don't make eye contact. Just shut up and do what I say."

He doesn't have a problem complying with the "shut up" part. The empousa hisses at her, red hair flaming like a live fire, and lunges forward. With a scream, Rose kicks her in the gut – she is honestly surprised that her foot makes contact at all – and grabbing Eric, they slide away. Eric bangs his head on the wall and makes a groaning sound. Luckily, Rose only bangs her head on his chest, so she is okay. _Knife, knife_, she thinks desperately, grasping for it under her uniform. The sleeve is too tight and her clumsy, frenzied fingers can't unbutton, so she grabs the cuff and rips as hard as she can. The fabric tears easily, and the first thing that comes to mind is how much she's going to have to pay for the ruined uniform. Maybe she can stitch it together later.

The dagger gleams against her pale underside of her arm.

Eric notices it and makes it adamantly known to the world. "Holy shit, woman! What the fucking hell is that? You carry concealed weapons all over the place? _On a plane?_ How do you even get past a metal detector? Isn't that illegal in like, five billion ways?" He scoots away from her nervously. "You're off your goddamn rocker."

She pulls it out from the sheath without nicking the delicate skin of her wrist. "Okay, focus! If I didn't have this on me, I'd be dead and you'd be vampire food," she snarls at him.

Brandishing the dagger in front of her, she waves it as a warning. "Don't come closer," she tells the empousa. "I will slice your mother-fucking head off, and don't think I won't."

The empousa laughs and the sound makes Rose's skin crawl. She doesn't know what the mortals in the airport are seeing, but for once, she wishes the Mist wasn't doing such a damn good job of keeping everything hidden. A police force attacking with guns blazing would be really nice right about now. Her fingers grip the hilt tighter. She will not lose. Eric has fallen silent behind her, and she doesn't have time to look back and see if he's died of fright or simply lost his voice.

"Don't," she warns again, her voice strangled.

The empousa – whose name may or may not actually be Carmella – sniffs the air like a dog. "You," she says, pointing one perfectly sharp, red-painted fingernail at Rose. "You are not a god's brat. Or if you are, something is covering your scent." She cocks her head to one side, considering. "No, you are something different altogether. But," she says with an elegant pause, "that will not prevent me from gutting you like a fish. It'll teach you not to get in the way of my projects."

She is not, _not_ going to die at the hands of a demon with a donkey's leg. She's not going to get killed because she felt like being a Good Samaritan to a useless, womanizing, _clueless_ demigod. No, she's not going to let Eric be the reason she dies alone in Marco Polo Airport. Her determination courses through her veins like new fire and in a savage voice, she spits, "Yeah, I'm the daughter of two demigods. But my genetic makeup isn't going to be your primary concern when you find my dagger shoved through your intestines."

Leaning forward, she takes a step, lunges, and the golden blade is sure in its target, disappearing cleanly, perfectly into the empousa's midsection. Rose is put off-balance by the ease of which the blade cuts through flesh. Her feet lose contact with the ground, and her forehead barrels into the demon's shoulder, sending the blade even deeper. There is no blood, nothing. Only warm body and beating heart and licks of hair rubbing against Rose's cheek, and all of a sudden, she feels sick. The empousa screams – Rose is sure the entire airport, maybe the entire world, hears it – and disintegrates. Without the support, she falls hard on her knees and pain shoots up her entire body. Her muscles give out, and she collapses onto the cold, tile floor – the hilt of the dagger sliding against her sweaty palm.

It's about half a minute later when she realizes what an awkward position she's in. She's lying on her stomach, legs slightly bent, and her cheek is pressed into the ground. Dimly, she wonders where Eric has gone, but he answers the question for her when he coughs in the background. Footsteps, and then, he's helping her up and brushing the disheveled curls away from her face. He is pale, almost paler than the empousa, and she can't help but feel indignant about this – isn't she the one who almost got, what was it, "gutted like a fish?" At least, the empousa was only going to suck his blood. Then, she realizes how irrational her thinking is at this moment, and she blinks – once, twice – to return herself to reality.

He smiles shakily and a little bit of color goes back into his ivory cheeks. "There's a tile-mark on your face," he says.

She slaps his approaching hand away and his smile abruptly disappears, replaced by a look of confusion and horror. He shrinks away, shaking his head. "No, no," he mutters. "She – she's crazy, out of her mind." Rose knows he's talking about her, except the way he's saying it makes it seem like he's the one who's crazy. She crawls toward him, her kneecaps protesting, and he puts his hand out. "No," he says louder. And then, almost too quietly, "Murderer."

She stops in her tracks. "What did you say?"

"You're a murderer. You killed that woman – Carmella. I saw it. I saw it with my own eyes, I did, you killed her, and _ohmygod you're insane, insane,_" he babbles, eyes wide. He's terrified.

And she's pissed. "You saw me kill her. Did you also see that she had _fangs_? Did you miss that detail?"

He's still shaking his head, but she's pretty sure it has nothing to do with her questions. He's just in shock. In the tiny part of her head that isn't in pain or angry or frustrated or relieved, she is amazed that any demigod could make it to the age of – twenty-eight, twenty-nine? – without having any previous contact with monsters. She's not even a full demigod, and she's seen them before. Perhaps she was wrong about him. Maybe he really isn't a demigod. But then, how can he see through the Mist?

Eric gets up, his legs shaking and lips trembling, grabs his computer bag and slings it over his shoulder. "I'm going to baggage claim," he says with a tremor. "I'm going there to get my suitcases, and I don't ever want to see you again, get it? I'm not ever taking United, and if you try to follow me, I'm calling the authorities. You're psycho." He pushes past her, which isn't hard because she's still on the ground in disbelief.

Savagely, she wishes she had let him go and the empousa had dragged him to some off-brand motel and sucked every last drop out of his veins. She watches him walk off, and something inside her makes her shout after him, "You're a demigod, Eric. You are."

He doesn't look back even though she knows he can hear her.

"Are you dyslexic?" she yells.

He stops cold and turns around. "What?"

"I asked you if you are dyslexic," she says evenly. "And diagnosed with ADHD."

He stares at her. "Don't ever talk to me. Again." He disappears into the crowd, leaving her sitting alone in a nook of Marco Polo Airport.

..o..

Eric lies in bed, eyes open. The ceiling is full of dark shadows, and he can't sleep. He feels like he's seven again after accidentally having watched Bride of Chucky on TV. Every little noise makes him jump. Uneasily, he pulls the covers up to his chin. How is he supposed to sleep after being attacked by a real live vampire? What was that? He may not remember much of the Greek mythology crap they shoved down his throat in high school, but he's pretty sure that vampires are not part of mythology-canon.

Doesn't matter. The thing was about to _eat_ him. The red eyes haunt his memory. It's not just that either.

How does Rose know that he has ADHD and is dyslexic? She might be strange and unhinged, but she couldn't have gone through his medical records. It's not very common, is it? To have both? He definitely remembers struggling through books in elementary school and being put on a special program. Who _is_ Rose, anyway? Maybe she's some kind of governmental secret agent, and she's his bodyguard – no, not a girl bodyguard – or maybe she's an assassin! But she protected him. And – his head spins in so many different directions that he actually begins to feel nauseous. He almost, _almost_ believes what she said about the Greek gods.

It would make a heck of a lot of things that happened as a kid more reasonable. Right now, it's too late, and he can't decide what to think. So he gets out of bed, turns on the light, downs a couple of sleeping pills, and crawls back.

Starting from that night, the dreams – or nightmares – begin to come. They start slowly, reassuring him with their gentleness, before turning into something fierce and unknown. He dreams of the vampires and remembers from a time before memory that they are called empousai. He dreams of a camp somewhere near Manhattan where people like him use swords and other medieval-like weapons. He dreams of his mother, who disappeared long before he had consciously known people were supposed to have mothers. But he dreams of her sweet, sweet smile and her black hair that smells of midnight rain, and he sighs in his sleep. Once upon a time, she loved him. Perhaps she does not remember him now, but once, she did. He is too old to cling to regrets, so he just drinks in visions of her, imagines what to say if he ever met her – he is fairly sure he won't.

The most recurring dream is the one of Rose. Or is it Rose? It looks like Rose, sounds like her, but something tells him that this blonde girl with the exact shade of gray eyes is not the flight attendant he knows. But he knew her once, even though he cannot recall her name. He feels a deep connection to her, and some nights, she talks to him. She tells him things that he promptly forgets in the morning, but they seem to be important at the time. She is beautiful, and she makes his heart ache. He wants to hold her, for his fingers and arms to remember her; he wants to curl up inside her bones and find the missing parts of their history, but she never lets him get that close. She is so, so far away. And some mornings, he wakes up and finds that his cheeks are damp.

The girl who is and isn't Rose fades away by the time he slips on his clothes, and all he has left is her sad smile.

Eric is not a superstitious man. He doesn't believe in tarot cards or palm reading or crystal balls. Dreams aren't supposed to have a "deeper meaning." He's a businessman. He's more sensible than that. But these dreams – they're something else. He can't ignore them, and he certainly can't dismiss them. Whatever they mean, whatever they are, he knows two things. One, monsters are real. If they are real, then it is a natural and necessary assumption that the gods are real as well. How could one exist without the other? And two, despite the multiple times Rose has told him that she hates his guts and the times he has told Rose that he thinks she should be committed, he is going to see her again. It just depends on when he summons up the courage to step back onto the 747 of United Airlines –

..o..

It's by the grace of the gods – perhaps because she saved Eric's pitiful, ungrateful ass – and Shondra's leniency that Rose doesn't get sacked. When she showed back up at the plane, everyone searching frantically (apparently, they called in an emergency notice in the airport too, but she had been too busy to hear it), sleeve torn, and a bruise on her cheek, the immediate reaction was _fire her._ But perhaps because Shondra sees her on the verge of tears, is her friend and conveniently the senior flight attendant, Rose gets off with a warning and the instruction to get her uniform patched up.

Shondra gives her the look of death, and Rose knows if she even sticks a toenail over the line, she is done for. So for the next few flights, she serves with stiff formality. She hardly dares utter a single curse word behind the curtain – that's quite a feat for her – and she is polite. Nice. Perfect. She does her job flawlessly. And she is glad, glad because she will never see Eric again – good riddance. Hopefully, he has a great life, and just maybe, the empousa taught him that sleeping with unknown women can bring worse things than chlamydia. In which case, she shouldn't feel bad at all. Why should she? She saved his life, and she taught him about the wonders of death by demon. Truly, he should be grateful.

Asshole.

Rose can't wait for her break, which comes in two weeks. She'll go home, kiss Allie hello, and for a couple nights, she might sleep in Allie's bed too, just to imprint the smell of her baby girl in her head, so she'll have something to cling to the next time she flies halfway around the world. She'll say hello to her father. Maybe she'll even tell him about how she killed an empousa. Maybe he'll write a poem about it.

So maybe she won't tell him.

But it's a delicious little secret she keeps to herself. She is proud of herself. And why shouldn't she be? Things have gone back to normal, the way they're supposed to be. The gods can forget about her, and she can forget about them. It is tiring, letting her life bounce back and forth between the times Eric is on board and the times in between. So she is glad that everything is right again.

At least, everything is right until one day, she stands in the front, greeting the passengers as they board and _he_ shows up again. He has no computer bag this time. He's come empty-handed, and that is enough to put her on guard. What's he doing without his work stuff? He looks pensive, so lost in his own thoughts, that he doesn't see her until he leaves the tunnel. "Rose," Eric says, without preamble.

She's so stunned that she can't even offer a response, her usual cheery, "Welcome aboard!" She just stares at him and at that moment, he looks so archaically familiar that it scares her. There is nothing, nothing at all, in that speck of time that would convince her they hadn't known each other before. The memory teases her, dusts past her consciousness and out of sight, like a wispy butterfly.

"Hello," he says. His hands are in his pockets, thumbs sticking out, and his shirtsleeves are rolled up.

The first thing she thinks is how nice his forearms look, but her conscious quickly shuts that down. _No,_ she thinks. _Bad._

"Can we talk?" he asks softly. He sounds sincere. Rose has since learned that there are two Eric modes. One is as a typical rich little shit who acts like a jerk to her and who she hates. The other is the gentler, quieter version of him, the one whose laugh she likes and who is buried most of the time under the other version. But it proves that he isn't _always_ an asshole. Just some of the time.

She can't think properly, so what she ends up saying is, "So you finally came around, huh? Crawled out of the pit of denial you dug for yourself?" She is immediately sorry for her sarcasm when a spasm of guilt flashes across his face. Since when did he begin caring about what insults she had to throw at him? And since when did she begin caring about him caring?

Someone behind Eric coughs loudly. "Excuse me, but you two are holding up the line." Rose looks beyond Eric and sees a gathering trail of angry people, some of them hauling heavy baggage and tapping their feet, waiting to get on the plane.

She colors up. "Sorry," she says, letting him pass. He gives her a lingering look before slipping past without a word.

He sits in first class, as usual, but without the suit and tie. She knows while the plane lifts off that he is waiting to speak to her, and the thought sends her into a nervous frenzy. She drops the seatbelt she is supposed to demonstrate safety with. But that wasn't as bad as when she drops a half-full pot of coffee on the carpet and has to babble apologies while she attempts to sponge it out of the carpet with paper towels. Shondra raises her eyebrow, but says nothing. The implication is clear. _Why don't you stop carrying breakable or spillable objects for a while, hon?_ Face aflame, she quarantines herself to handing out plastic packages of peanuts and delivering extra blankets.

When the first round of meals is doled out, she makes her way through the sleeping rows of people, the blinds on the windows pulled down, and to Eric. It is inevitable that she speak to him. For some reason, she dreads it. Or maybe she looks forward to it. She can't really separate out the feelings anymore. From behind, he looks like Eric. She breathes. He doesn't look like this mysterious someone from her past that she can't put her finger on.

He turns.

"You rang?" she says, a hand on her hip.

"Yeah," he replies eventually after a long pause. "I think – I think I believe you."

"About what?" she asks, momentarily confused.

"About me. Being a semi-god or whatever you called it. I think you're telling the truth."

"_Demigod_," she corrects. "Gods, you're hopeless." She considers him briefly, looking lonely, looking lost, and decides to be gentle with him. It's not every day one discovers divine parentage. It's probably a jarring thing to most people. Rose was an exception because for her, it had been too natural, just part of growing up and finding out that – whoops! – she'd never get to see Grandma and Grandpa because they were actually Aphrodite and Apollo. It hadn't seemed like such a big deal at the time. But who knows? Maybe Eric's mortal parent lied about it, so he thought his stepmother or father was his real one. That would be quite a surprise, wouldn't it? She clears her throat. "Look, sorry. I didn't mean to dump it all on you like that. It wasn't very nice."

"It's not your fault," he tells her. "Carmella – the empousa, I mean – started it."

He doesn't blame her. For some reason, it makes her feel a little bit lighter. He's still looking at her strangely, and it raises goose bumps on her skin, even though she doesn't know why. She resists the urge to run away. "So," she says in an effort to fill the silence. She can't remember the last time an encounter between the two of them was punctured by awkward silences. "Why are you going to Italy this time?"

Eric shrugs, as if he could care less. "I'm not."

"What do you mean 'you're not?' You're on the plane to Venice, in case you missed the sign in the terminal. We can't fly you back," she says. Maybe the encounter tipped him over the deep end. Maybe she's cosseting a crazy man.

"I mean," he clarifies, shifting in his seat, "I took the plane because I wanted to talk to you, not because I had to go to Italy. I don't have your phone number or anything. It's not like I had any other way of contacting you."

She backs up. "Whoa, whoa. I thought you said you never wanted me to talk to you again."

He gives her a small, crooked smile. "I changed my mind."

Carefully, she sits on his armrest and perches precariously close to him. She is daring today. "What made you do that? You're usually so set and stubborn on everything you do."

"Me? I think you're the stubborn one." He quiets, regarding her for a while.

..o..

He wonders if it would be stupid if he told her he had dreams about her. Would that make him sound like a pervert? She already thinks he's a pervert anyway, so maybe that wouldn't matter. She certainly wouldn't believe him if he told her they were completely innocent dreams. If indeed it is her in the dreams, she was quite a prude in a past life, apparently. She won't even let him get close enough to touch her arm, her cheek. But this is Rose, he remembers, startled. This is Rose.

This is not the nameless gray-eyed girl who knows him.

This is Rose.

Is it all the same?

He looks deeply into those identical gray eyes and feels a stirring in his belly. This is –

..o..

"Um, hello?" Rose says, wagging a few fingers in front of his face. "Are you alive in there?"

He blinks. "Yes."

Vaguely, and completely unrelated to the current topic, Rose thinks about how absurd it is to buy a plane ticket just to talk to a flight attendant. Nobody normal does that kind of thing. Eric must be obscenely rich. She finds herself wandering again to the land of dreams where _how great would it be if there was enough money to pay for Allie's tuition in twelve years?_ She wonders if Eric has any children. Her guess is no. Eric is too light and insubstantial to know the weightiness of parenthood. She wonders if his wife ever wanted children. All things too private for the casual observer to think about, and why is she contemplating them now?

She shifts from the armrest, feeling flushed and embarrassed without knowing quite why. "So are you just going to stare at me like a baboon the entire time or do you actually have something substantive to say?"

"Oh, yes," he says. "Why don't you bring me a bottle of Grey Goose and we'll talk?"

And she finds, surprisingly – that's okay with her. Perhaps there _is_ something about saving someone's life in an Italian airport that makes it impossible to harbor feelings of dislike anymore. She pours him the customary glass, and he solicitously offers her a sip first. She says something like, "I don't think I'm supposed to be drinking on the job," and he hastily retracts.

There is a lot for him to catch up on. He has as million questions, about the gods, about their world, and about how science fits into all of it. She tries her best, but honestly, she doesn't really think about how science fits into Greek mythology – she just kind of ignores the incongruities and hopes that the mutual exclusiveness of the two aren't currently tearing a hole in the fabric of the time-space continuum. Eric finds her general lack of curiosity amazing and shoots out another twenty questions for her. She provides them, patiently, realizing that it's kind of nice to know another person who believes in all of the craziness. For so long, she thought she was going mad with secrets.

"Do you know who my parent is, then?" Eric asks.

"If you don't, then I don't either. Your mother or father?"

He takes another swig. Half of the bottle is gone. "My mother," he says quietly. "I don't have a single memory of her. She didn't leave anything when she left. Well, she left my dad, I guess. He never married. Still a bachelor. I think, when I was young, the claiming thing you talked about happened to me. There was a sign, but I didn't understand it at the time or I just thought it was freaky and ignored it. I probably shouldn't have. I probably should've gone to that Camp Half-Blood thing. Sure would've been a change. My life's not that interesting, you know."

Rose shakes her head. "Firstly, if you're still alive, your mother is most likely just a minor goddess. You don't draw too much attention, and that's a good thing. Being a demigod is not the kind of 'interesting' you want to have in your life. Besides, there's nothing more interesting in life than learning to live it with passion and joy." Even as she says the words out loud, they amaze her. Since when did she become good at giving out advice? She certainly never took any of it herself. Or maybe it's because she has no passion for being a flight attendant, nor does she have any joy in living the way she does now, always worrying about next month's bills. And gods, if tax season isn't the worst.

The flight is almost too short. Eric doesn't have anything to pack up, so he twiddles his thumbs as the other people are gathering their belongings, the plane slowly rumbling to a stop.

"What are you going to do in Italy?" Rose asks. He has no reason to be there, after all. And no matter how great their conversation was, sleep is more important. She's about to pass out. There is absolutely no reason under the sun to use the fourteen hours between landing and taking off again for anything other than sleep. She's going to check into her hotel room and crash.

He shrugs. "I dunno. Do some sightseeing, I guess. I never thought about it."

"You never thought about what you were going to do after reaching the destination?" She is incredulous. "You suck at planning. And living. Seriously, how do you get by?" _With a lot, a lot of money_, her brain supplies helpfully.

His devil-may-care attitude shines through in his grin. "Rose – you need to learn to live a little. Be spontaneous."

"Poor people can't afford to be spontaneous," she shoots back.

"Can poor people also not afford a sense of humor?"

"Hey!" she says indignantly. "I do too have a sense of humor!"

But he has slipped out of his row and is moving steadily forward with the crowd, being pushed out of first-class cabin and into the tunnel, out of the plane. "See you next time, Rose!" he shouts brightly.

She stands there with his empty bottle of vodka for a long time and wonders when he became a permanent fixture in her joyless, passionless life.

..o..

In his free time, Eric peruses old, worn books in the library about Greek mythology. He reads about how the world was created, the ancient myths of Heracles and Jason, Theseus and Perseus. He feels strange about it, as if he has slipped into another skin of himself, when he runs his fingers over the pictures of titans and gorgons. He feels erudite and scholarly and remembers way back when in college when he shunned the humanities. He used to say he majored in learning how to make money. That is, he majored in economics and finance. Mythology was stupid and old. Technology, stocks, the rise and fall of the economy – that was today and tomorrow. That was new.

Now, he pages restlessly through The Iliad and The Odyssey and finds a new thrill of learning what he was. His past, perhaps. It reads familiar. It reads like home. And that both exhilarates and terrifies him.

(He misses Rose.)

He doesn't tell Nigella. She would think it was stupid, although Nigella's obsession with shopping at high-end stores is stupid too. He finds he can no longer connect with her. Who is this woman he has married? Who are they? One day, she walks into his study with a book he bought from one of those independent bookstores. The cover is bare and cold; the title rests on the spine alone. She holds the book between her forefinger and her thumb, as if touching it with more might dirty her manicured hands. "This," she says.

Eric looks up from another one of the myths he is reading, tucks it under some business files quickly. "What?"

"Since when did you become a philosophy professor?" She shakes down her wavy, dark brown hair.

"It's mythology," he tells her. "And it's a new hobby." _Get over it,_ he thinks.

(He misses Rose.)

"Who cares what it's called? You've been totally distracted for the past weeks. And you're leaving these things all over the place. What's your problem? Look, I've been trying to plan out our yearly vacation to Fiji, and you haven't been pitching in at all. I can't do all of the work around here."

_You don't work,_ he thinks. _You sit at home and watch the Real Housewives of Orange County_ _on TV._ But it's a bit of a defense mechanism in reality. He had forgotten about the trip to Fiji. He also finds, now that he has remembered, he doesn't really care about it. "How much planning can it take? We go to the same resort." He pulls out the book and begins reading again. He doesn't care if Nigella sees.

She stamps her foot. "It's the principle of the thing! If you don't care about it, then why don't we just skip it this year?"

She's saying it as a threat, but suddenly, Eric is tired of this argument. He doesn't want to go to Fiji anyway. "Fine," he says. "Let's skip it."

He can tell immediately – that wasn't the answer she wanted. She is stunned into silence. "I'm throwing this away," she says about the book she holds. "I don't want the ratty thing sitting on our coffee table. You always waste money on the dumbest of things." She stands there, pouting ferociously.

He half-turns. "Don't. It's mine."

Nigella is pissed. She tosses the book onto the ground, where it lands open and face down. Without another word, she flounces out, slamming the door shut behind her, and Eric knows she's not going to talk to him for days. She is really, really good at holding grudges. Carefully, he picks the book up by the spine, and the pages fall into place with a gentle rustle. He brushes off the cover. And he tucks it into his bookshelf. Whether it was yesterday or a week ago, a month ago, perhaps today – he has changed.

(He misses Rose.)

The tidal wave has gathered, and he is waiting for it to crest.

..o..

In the middle of the night, Rose stares at the shadows on her ceiling and thinks about Ricky. She was nineteen when she met him, a freshman in college, her whole life ahead of her. She loved linguistics, the turn of a foreign phrase sounded like poetry in her ears. She felt, like everyone else in college, that she was going to go far. He was a philosophy major, brown-haired and green-eyed – intelligent. He was an agnostic; he cared about politics. He argued with professors about the meaning of Hobbes and Locke – they loved him. He was bright. He was the star of the classroom.

She liked him too. On a snowy winter day, they met. She was too poor to afford a good pair of snow boots, so she trudged through the knee-deep snowdrifts, powdery white clinging to her jeans. She had too many books. Ricky walked out of Smith Hall – he was in her World Religions class – offered his scarf and carried her books back to her dorm. They started dating and kept at it all through college. Everyone thought they were going to get married. Everyone thought he would propose before graduation.

Instead, she got pregnant, and he got scared away. He was going into the Peace Corps – he didn't have time for a poor girlfriend and child.

And the rest of the story played out, as everyone knew. Rose hasn't attended any reunion of any kind – high school or college. Those are for the people who make a difference, who have something to show off. She has nothing except the bills waiting for her on the dining table. Sometimes, her father calls to make sure she is doing all right. He is a good man, her father, and he means well. She just can't help feeling bitter that he left nothing for her.

She turns onto her side and flips over her pillow for the colder side. Since then, she hasn't ever dated anyone. Allie doesn't need a stepfather, and Rose doesn't need another man to leech off of her savings. She doesn't want to leech off anyone else either. She likes being independent. It probably looks strange to anyone on the outside, but Rose stopped caring about other people's perceptions of her when she swallowed her pride and became a flight attendant. She's kept her degree, but only for her to look at. A promise, a hope of what could have been. She doesn't look at it too often, though. Nobody can make a living off of promises and hopes.

There are times, though, when she thinks there is something more that life had in store for her. Her life doesn't suck, not really. She has Allie. That makes everything worthwhile. But sometimes – a secret she doesn't tell anybody – she wonders if the gods didn't have something special in store for her. She believes it because, well, she can't ever feel happy with what she has. She always thinks that maybe tomorrow is the day her life will turn around. Maybe tomorrow is the day she will discover what she is truly meant to be. Maybe tomorrow is the day she finds herself.

The thing that scares her is, when she sees Eric, she feels the future come crashing in through her window, a quiet roar.

She will either swim in it – or drown.

..o..

With red-rimmed eyes from lack of sleep, Rose dully greets the passengers as they board the plane. She stifles a yawn. It's probably around 5:30 am. She ran out of Ambien, so here she is. She hopes desperately that she doesn't slump over snoring on the cart when she serves breakfast. _After this,_ she thinks, _I am taking a period of sick leave._ She has enough days for about a week off. It's close to Christmas, anyway. Time for a break before she works herself to exhaustion.

It's a cloudy morning with light flurries in LaGuardia. The airplane takes off without a hitch, and her ears do their usual popping. When she started working, her ears used to take forever to pop, and they would hurt until she was prostrate on the ground with pain. She did everything, chew gum, hold her breath, blow up her cheeks – none of it worked. Eventually, her ears got accustomed to making the switch, and she barely notices it now.

She casts a wistful gaze at first-class, wondering when the next time Eric shows up will be. There's a man who looks a bit like him from behind, sitting in the fourth row. He has black hair. It's kind of pathetic how she looks for him now. Except – oh! He looks over his shoulder, and it _is_ him. He breaks into a grin and for some reason, it roots her to the spot. When she finally gets up the courage to come closer, she notices yet again he does not have any carry-on items, not even a copy of the newspaper. What was he doing? Just staring at the back of the seat behind him?

"Hey," he says.

"Hi there."

He pauses as if he is drinking in the sight of her. Or maybe that's just her, drinking in the sight of him, being stupidly and foolishly hopeful – of what? "Business trip?" she asks.

"Nope."

"You came to see me," she says. It's not a question.

"Well, since you seem so set on that, then sure. Yeah, I came to see you."

She twists her mouth. Even in the best of times, he still has that jerk side to him. But he's laughing now. "It's a joke. Calm down. Of course I came to see you." He touches her hand.

In amazement, she looks down where his fingers have taken a hold of hers. What is he doing? He's – her lips are dry and she licks them. She looks up, and he really is staring at her this time. All of the laughter has died. He pulls her slightly closer. "Eric," she mumbles.

Abruptly, he gets up. Starts walking down the aisle and pulls her with him. She's so stunned that her feet trip over themselves as she follows him. It doesn't occur to her to pull away. He's sure, determined, wherever he's going. He pushes aside the curtain, and then – it's the bathroom, and it's unoccupied, and suddenly, Rose knows exactly what he plans on doing. There is a huge lump in her throat and her heart has started fluttering around, unsure of whether to slow down or speed up. Her fingers tingle where he holds them. The next thing she knows, he's stepping into the bathroom and pulling her in too. He shuts the door, locks it.

The space is small – there's barely any room to move. Her back presses into the metal sink, and his is against the door. She blinks. "Eric – what are you – no!"

Except, she does the exact wrong thing and looks into his eyes, those green, green eyes, that were so familiar from the beginning, and the words catch in her throat. He leans down and his breath washes over her – his lips are on hers.

Her body catches on fire. This – she knows this. Then, she is kissing back; his hands cup her face, and hers snake into his hair. He leans into her, and the edge of the sink cuts almost painfully into her back – if she could bring herself to care about it – and his hand comes down on the metal lip, trapping her. She is dying. She is dying together with him, and she has been waiting her whole life for this. Her hands trail slowly down to his shoulders while his hot mouth moves down to her exposed neck and then, her fingers find their way to the shallow dip at the small of his back –

– _you drool when you sleep, because you're my friend, Seaweed Brain, stupid son of Poseidon, Riptide, my team in Capture the Flag, the gods are real, princess curls, Kronos, pine tree, the Golden Fleece, you made a good guinea pig, see you next summer, so you owe me what else is new, stop thinking so hard, Wise Girl, I am never going to make things easy for you, I love – _

..o..

_"Because you and I, we're meant to be. We just – have to remember to find each other next time."_

..o..

"—Percy," she gasps.

He has stopped. "I know you," he says. She is sitting on the sink, and his face is inches away. "Annabeth." He wipes a tear away from her cheek. "I know you."

Someone knocks sharply on the door. "Hello? This is cabin crew personnel. Please open the door."

Slowly, Rose gets off the sink and the happiness that had been steadily expanding inside her chest deflates, leaving her feeling old and empty. Eric removes his hands from her, and he opens the door. Shondra stands there, looking stern. The expression slides off of her face when she sees who it is. Her hands go flying up to her mouth.

"R-Rose?"

"I'm sorry," she whispers.

Shondra is trembling, either with fury or sadness or shock, Rose isn't sure. "Y-you're fired," she says. "When we return to LaGuardia, we'll file the paperwork. For now, please just – sit behind the curtain and – keep to yourself."

"Shondra—"

"Please, Rose." She turns to Eric. "Sir, I ask that you return to your seat. I'm going to have to ban you from future United Airline flights."

"I understand," he mumbles.

Shondra leads Rose to the seat behind the curtain, where she is to sit, like a child in time out. They are silent as the grave, until Shondra says, "I gave you all of the chances I could. I can't believe you would do this." And she paces away, Eric behind her. Rose locks eyes with Eric for a brief moment, and he mouths, _I'll find you, Wise Girl. Like I promised._

Rose has the dignity to sit there, composed, for the entire way there and the entire way back – nearly twenty-seven hours, but when she reaches her hotel room in New York City, there is nothing that keeps her from screaming and crying until her throat bleeds.

Percy, she thinks.

_I know you._

..o..

She returns to Seattle, where Allie is waiting with open arms. She picks up the pieces of her life. She doesn't know where Eric lives, doesn't have his phone number. It doesn't matter anyway. He is married to Nigella. She should feel ashamed for going after a married man like that, having feelings for a married man like that. She should feel ashamed – but she can't. Because he belonged to her first, after all. Does that count? She's going to pretend like it does.

She falls asleep at night dreaming of the life they might've had if she met him earlier.

She goes over the fragmented memories of them every day, because she is afraid that one day, she will wake up and forget them again. She needs to know they were real. She needs to know that he is Percy and that she is Annabeth.

She needs to know that she isn't crazy.

Because taxes and bills still have to be paid, she finds a job as a waitress at a local restaurant, and another part-time as a barista at Starbucks. It's an even lower step than she was as a flight attendant. Ironically, she probably should've appreciated her first job more, even if it wasn't everything she wanted it to be. But in a way, this is better. She likes being able to tuck Allie into bed at night. She likes being able to go to parent-teacher conferences.

She finds that she has forgotten how much she likes being a mother. So perhaps it was a good thing she was fired. It still hurts to say_ – fired._

Her father stays at home, and he never asks why she has returned to Seattle. She doesn't tell him.

Every few nights, she gets a new dream, a new memory of things that were. They come in such fast progression now, like that one split-second in time opened up the floodgates to another separate lifetime. She looks forward to the new memories, and she dreads them too. Because they already happened, but she is here. What can she do about that?

A year passes. Allie goes to first grade. She has no dyslexia and no ADHD. Lucky that Ricky was a mortal. She is glad Allie doesn't have the same problems she did. This also means Allie will never get attacked by an empousa in an airport. She smiles a little at the memory and is startled that she is smiling. For a while, she thought she had forgotten how. But Allie – Allie can always make her smile.

So everything goes back to normal, except for the shadow life Rose keeps to herself. Sometimes, the nighttime memories make her laugh – like the time he thought hubris was hummus. Other times, she wakes up sobbing – like the time she thought he had died after Mt. Saint Helens. She gets to know him little by little each day. It is almost enough.

One day, she goes home to find that Allie has checked the mail already and put it on the dining room table. There's a letter addressed to her in a messy scrawl – she can barely read it. It's a thin letter with no name, but the return address reads from New York City. It's not professional mail. It's personal. She can't find the letter-opener, so she just rips it open on the side, fingers trembling. Carefully, she slides out a single-paged letter and unfolds the elegant, monogrammed paper. The ink is heavy and dark, obviously written with a good fountain pen. The words jump out at her.

_Dear Rose,_

_I found you._

Heart stuttering to a stop, her hand drops limply to her side. She takes a deep breath to steady herself. She never thought – never dreamed – that this would happen. The curiosity is too much to bear, so she continues reading, but she sits down. Just in case.

_One year and two months later. It wasn't easy. I don't want you to think I just forgot for all this time. You would not believe how many Rose Parkers there are living in the continental U.S. alone. I never would've guessed you lived in Seattle. It took a lot of searching – and probably not all of it was legal, either. But you won't report me for stalking, right?_

She smiles a little.

_A promise is a promise. I promised I'd find you. And now, finally, I have. I'm sorry. For everything. I'm sorry I got you fired. That was really irresponsible of me, and I take full credit. I am terrified that I ruined your life. I hope I can make up for it. By the way, I take Delta Airlines now. United wouldn't be the same without you anyway. So I guess we have a lot to catch up on._

_It would've been idiotic to say this before – on the plane, I mean – but I dream about you all of the time. It drives me crazy. I should get a therapist, but I don't want to get sent an asylum. I dream about us. About the time – before. I think I know what it means now. I remember when I met you at Camp Half-Blood however long ago. I told you that you would look pretty with long hair._

She touches one of her curls and realizes that her hair has grown out past her shoulders. She just forgot about getting a haircut in between working two jobs. But maybe she'll keep it this way.

_The memories come all of the time. Sometimes when I'm getting my morning coffee. Or in the middle of a business meeting (ask me about that sometime; it really sucked). But I keep feeling like the story isn't complete. There's a whole life there – I think it was amazing, but I can't remember the whole thing. And I think that's because you have the other half. Is this making any sense? Anyway, this is all in a desperate attempt for you to write to me, to tell me what you remember, and maybe –_

_Well, maybe we can piece together that something that I always felt I was missing._

_I miss you._

_I don't need to tell you that I love you because you already know that._

_-Eric._

_P.S. Because I have caused irreparable monetary damage, I sent you a check. You can keep the change. Just, don't write your name when you send me the next letter because my wife might flip her shit. But don't worry about the money. I'll square with her on that one._

Rose shakes the envelope, and true to his word, a check flutters out. She catches it before it reaches the floor. She blinks and her heart does another ungraceful thunk. Printed neatly on the monetary value line: fifteen thousand dollars.

Fifteen thousand dollars! Rose feels faint. Reads it again. There it is, plain as day. And when she puts it into the bank, the teller doesn't say anything different. She cannot believe he can write fifteen thousand dollar checks. But it sure makes her happy. When Allie comes home that day, Rose is grinning from ear to ear, takes her little girl in her arms and takes them all out for a meal on the town.

Then, when everyone has gone to bed, and she is sitting under the light of her lamp, she writes.

..o..

_Dear Eric,_

_I can't – I don't know what to say about the money. Thank you. It has made everything better. I am – truly in your debt._

_There is so much that cannot be expressed. It is a secret. And I am glad that I can share that secret with you. I'm not sure I will say it in the right way, but here, I will try._

_Remember the time you rode with me on the back of an animal transport van and we shared Double-Stuf Oreos? I was feeling tired and miserable, but I think that was the first moment I realized if we were either going to be the best of friends, or we were going to fall madly in love with each other and have way too many children. It was both. It was both._

_Remember the time you told me you wouldn't rather have anyone reattach your head but me? That was the summer of the fireworks we went to together. You got so red when you said it – it was hilarious, actually – but I think it was the most romantic thing you ever said to me. Honestly. Better than anything in The Notebook or Moulin Rouge. But that's probably just because it was me. I mean, nobody else would think that. You weren't really suave – before, I mean. You've gotten a bit better since then, but still no cigar._

_Remember the time you danced with me on Olympus after we got out of Mount Othrys? I wasn't an idiot. I knew Athena had said something to you that made you all shy, but I didn't bring it up. You should know, though, that I never was more annoyed at my mother than at that moment._

_Remember those, and it will be better than before._

_-Rose._

..o..

_Dear Rose,_

_Nigella and I are going through marriage counseling. Or – she's making me go through marriage counseling, but it's not going to work. I wish I could be honest with her about you, but she would never believe me. We signed a pre-nup, and she doesn't get any money if we divorce, so she is hell-bent on staying with me. I don't know. I think I loved her, once. I remember that. But something fell out of place, and you know the rest. If I had met you a long time ago, everything would be perfect, wouldn't it?_

_It can still be perfect. I'm going to leave her. We can start over, just like we intended last time. I'm sorry I ruined it. I'm sorry I didn't remember sooner._

_Remember the time you first taught me Greek? I was twelve, and I felt like the biggest idiot ever. And you were all accomplished and smart, and you kept rolling your eyes at me. Not that I blame you, because I obviously had no idea what was going on. But gods, it was humiliating to be shown up by a girl. I'll admit though, I thought you were the coolest thing. Totally gave up on trying to impress you. Guess I succeeded anyway, in the end._

_Remember the time I came back from the failed mission with Beckendorf? You ran onto the beach, and I think I almost kissed you right there and then. I was so afraid of losing you. If I could've, I would've made you stay behind so that you wouldn't get hurt. But then you dislocated your shoulder and broke you arm, so I guess I didn't do a great job there, did I? Still, you wouldn't have listened to me even if I tried. You are stubborn. That's not so bad._

_I am coming for you. Wait for me._

_-Eric._

..o..

_Dear Eric,_

_Don't._

Her pen stops in midair, quaking. In that one word, she has undone every dream. In that one word, she might not only break his heart, but hers too.

_I don't know about your history with Nigella. You say you loved her. I believe you. You say you don't love her now. I don't. Even if I did, I don't want to be the reason you break up your marriage. I'm not going to be the other woman. That's not me. You know I won't agree to that, and I swear to you, if you come to my doorstep with a proposal, I will close it in your face._

_I'm sorry. I can't._

_Maybe this is wrong, because we are living on memories instead of in the present. I don't want you to forget me, but I don't want you to live in the past. We can never return to it anyway. In the past, I wasn't a flight attendant for United Airlines. In the past, I was a daughter of Athena. In the past, I had only you._

_Now I have a daughter and you have a wife, and I am Rose and you are Eric. There are a million things I would've wanted to do and say if it weren't so. But it seems, here is where it all ends for us._

_Please do not make this harder than it is. So this is the last time I will say this, but I will say it once, so I can let it go. There is always next time._

_If you believe in the Fates – as I do. Love is eternal. So are you and I. In the grand scheme of things, even though we are thousands of miles away, even though our second chance has happened, I hope you realize in that one instance where we met each other on a flight to Italy has changed everything._

_Remember the time I taught you the constellations? (Or tried to, at least.) You said all you saw was a bunch of glowing dots in the sky, no lines connecting them. I told you that only an idiot like you wouldn't be able to understand something as basic as constellations. They'd been around since ancient times. How could I admit to you then that I couldn't see the lines either? I only knew them because I had practiced looking hard for so long. I think if we were all honest with each other, nobody really gets constellations. Some old farts created random lines between stars to draw pictures of things that don't really even look like what they're called. But you see, that is the trick. You might not see them and I might not see them, but the important thing is – they are there. The lines are there. You just have to have faith in them. Do you understand?_

_I love you, Seaweed Brain._

She ruins two sheets of paper crying over this letter. She thinks about not sending it. But there's no choice. It's not exactly the truth, the letter. She is not only Rose anymore. It's as if she has another soul entwined around her current one, and they have mixed and mixed and mixed until she can hardly tell one from the other. She is Rose, but somewhere inside, she is Annabeth too. But she is Allie's mother, and Eric is Nigella's husband.

It's not fair.

Nothing is fair. But Rose learned that lesson long before, and she is not apt to forget it. She is stubborn, like he said. So she puts the letter into an envelope, along with part of her heart, and seals it away. She sticks on the stamp. She methodically, painstakingly, writes his address on the front, and she drops it into the mailbox. Rain begins to pitter-patter on the sidewalks, and another rainy day in Seattle has begun.

As she walks back to her new flat – with the consistent fifteen thousand dollar checks, she was able to afford a new house – she has this overwhelming feeling that everything is over. Wasn't the reason she picked to come back to find him?

But then, she realizes, she did find him. By some unthinkable twist, their paths intersected, a girl from Washington and a boy from New York (again), and they remembered. And she is no longer unhappy about Ricky.

And she is no longer unhappy about her job.

And she is no longer unhappy about her life.

So the rain falls over Seattle, falls on her rooftops in light clinks. It falls over all of the city and the surrounding countryside. Clouds darken and gather over the mountains. The outside air smells like the ocean, and it filters into her house. Rose sits on her couch and watches the gentle summer storm roll on by. There are children outside her window, splashing in puddles, and one of them is Allie. She leans back with her cup of coffee and remembers some more.

..o..

In New York City, it is raining too. The rain darkens the cement on the streets, and it causes cursing while people try to hail for taxis. Somewhere, in a penthouse, Eric is sitting, reading the letter. He is looking out the window and trying to see all the way across the country. Nigella is in the kitchen, watching Food Network and making dinner.

He leans back in his leather chair with his book of Greek mythology propped open on his lap, the letter on his desk, and he remembers some more. He can learn to be happy one day at a time.

Happy, at least, that he found her and kept his promise.

..o..

They are glad.

And they are waiting to connect the dots.

* * *

**Author's Note:** Translation of the quote at the beginning of the chapter is traditionally, "In my end is my beginning," the phrase embroidered on Mary Queen of Scots' cloth of estate and attributed to her, although historically, it was used previously by her mother, Mary de Guise. (I'm a history major. Had to share.)

There are three parts left to this fic. How is this possible, you ask? Next is the Interlude (can't give too much away), then Part Three, and the epilogue (probably). Leave a review, if you can!


	3. Interlude

**Author's Note: **Intervening higher powers...

Three

by

Icy Roses

* * *

**Interlude**

* * *

**Complication** (n.) – _a difficult factor or issue often appearing unexpectedly and changing existing plans, methods, or attitudes_

...

It is December 21st, four days away from Christmas. Everyone is too busy looking ahead, threading through the holiday crowds, and seeking the shelter of merrily decorated, frosty-windowed stores. It is a sharply cold winter. Nobody lingers outside in the below-zero weather for too long. High above the city of New York, wound loosely around a mountain in the clouds, the palaces of Mount Olympus have quieted. White braziers burn like twinkling stars in the sky – which is no doubt what they look like to the mortals down below, if the city turned off all of its lights and sat in silence. But of course, New York is always never sleeps and the lights never dim. So the inhabitants of Olympus need not worry about that.

Winter solstice has passed and slowly, the minor gods begin to filter out of the main palace, some filing back into the city in the sky, and others disappearing to their places down below. The only ones left are the twelve – plus Hades, since he has officially been invited to Olympus since the Titan Rebellion so many years ago.

Zeus grumbles as the palace empties. "There is no way to reach any kind of consensus with – at last count – almost eighty immortals in this room. I can barely hear myself think." His blue eyes are sharp as ever as he surveys the room.

Hades looks bored and picks his fingernails in the center where Hestia has shrunk back into her child form. "Don't complain. You were the one who agreed to that stupid pact Poseidon's kid over there threw at us. Now the minor gods are getting all politically correct, and we can't even call them 'minor' anymore. What a load of crap. Some of them could barely make grass grow if they tried – like that qualifies them to be gods. Little pipsqueak fairies, maybe."

"I swore on the River Styx," Zeus growls. "Not my fault. But he's dead now, so we can go back on it, right? He'll never know."

"Hah." Hades props up his feet on a stool he poofs out of mid-air. "You obviously haven't been paying attention. Kid went for Isles of the Blest with that blonde girlfriend of his, whatever her name. He's almost up for round three. And shit, if he isn't causing all kinds of trouble in the Underworld and on earth." Nobody asks, but Hades is apparently eager to share his complaints with the rest of the Olympian family. Since being invited to annual winter solstice meetings, the Olympians have gotten to know him much better. And the first thing they learned? Hades is an incredible gossip, and he has almost a millennium of backlogged _he said she said's_ to unload on the rest of them. "Yeah," he plows on, "I guess it's become some kind of betting game to see if he'll make it next time around. I get that it's been a while since anyone got into the Isles, but _damn_. I swear if I hear about that boy one more time, I'll pop him off myself. Persephone, for one, creeps on him and the girl _all the time_. She thinks it's the best thing since Desperate Housewives, and I got to tell you – she really loved that show."

Zeus looks like he's about to say something derogatory like – get a life, Hades, seriously – but he snaps his mouth shut in time before the next World War Three breaks out over Manhattan. "Well, how was I supposed to know that? I don't hang out around dead people all of the time. I thought he just died and got it over with. Could've picked immortality, but he always had to be all non-conventional and self-sacrificing."

"Speaking of Percy Jackson and…that girl—" Hades begins.

"—Annabeth," Athena interjects. "Her name is Annabeth." She sounds irritated. "You don't have to keep referring to her as 'that girl,' Uncle."

"Doesn't matter what her name is," the lord of the Underworld continues heatedly, "the point is, they're messing up the way things are supposed to be. We have _rules_ we go by, and they're just bypassing them all. And I know someone's got something to do with it, so whoever it is needs to stop screwing with the way things work. Reincarnations are not supposed to _meet each other_. They are definitely not supposed to _remember each other._ Think about if every single reincarnation on earth right now met people from their past lives and got all their memories back? It would be chaos! It would be horrible! The spirits are supposed to go drink from Lethe before they get reborn so we don't have this problem. So I went personally to go check the database of people passing through the Rebirth Processing Center, and did you know what I found?" His nostrils are flaring and he's grown to twice his already-enormous height.

Poseidon rolls his eyes. "And I thought Zeus was the dramatic one in the family," he says off-handedly under his breath. "All right, don't keep us all hanging. Tell us what's the matter."

"There is absolutely no record of the two of them getting Lethe-water. It's obscene. It's ridiculous. Someone has been meddling in my system!"

From her seat, Aphrodite presses her freshly French-manicured fingers to her lips, but fails to suppress her giggles.

Swiftly, Hades turns to her and points. "It was you! I knew it!" he fumed. "This is not acceptable. This is not—"

She gives a pretty little flippant wave. "Oh, calm down; it was no big deal. I just bribed the service worker with a little – uh – love magic, and he came right around and did as I asked. Really, there was no apocalypse and the world is still turning. I don't know why you're having such a heart attack about it."

"You – don't know why," Hades sputters, "—I – you are interfering in my kingdom. My kingdom! Mine!" he squeals childishly.

"Ah," Aphrodite says sagely, "but matters of love are always in _my _jurisdiction." She leans in, fluttering her eyelashes. "_Mine._" She pulls a nail file out of the front of her dress and starts working at her already-perfect fingernails. "Besides, this was just too good to let slide. Oooo," she coos, "this is going to be so amazing. I knew when I met little Percy Jackson for the first time that he was going to make a wonderful love story, but I never dreamed he would make my next masterpiece. He's just the gift that keeps on giving! Marvelous." She goes all dreamy-eyed and gives a great sigh. "I can't wait to see how it turns out."

"I know exactly how it's going to turn out," Hades snaps. "And it's going to be Percy and Annabeth being born with absolutely no recollection of each other, having every last memory bleached from their brains. This kind of thing cannot happen again."

Aphrodite makes a little moue with her lips. "Oh, but I've never seen Persephone so happy in years. She's fallen in love with the story, dear. And you know how dull and down she can be in the winters normally. She's practically glowing. It makes living with her a good deal more bearable, doesn't it?" Her dimples deepen by the curve of her smile.

Hades colors up, making his sallow skin positively blotchy. "Persephone has nothing to do with what amounts to matters of business. She's had her fun. Do not presume to think you will be altering the process again. They will drink from Lethe."

Aphrodite crosses her arms and pouts. "You are such a Scrooge. But I have faith in my little lovebirds. They will find a way. Always do, you know. Confounds you, doesn't it? I suspect you don't understand how deeply memories are buried in the soul – there is always a good enough trigger. It just takes a little bit of time to find it. This will be a story for the ages. My greatest project since Cleopatra and Marc Antony."

"You are sick," Artemis declares from her throne. "You are making two people into 'your project' – don't you find something wrong with that? Well, I always knew. Romantic love is such a manipulation." She sniffs, as if her point has trumped all others.

But Aphrodite just smiles her mysterious smile and says, "No, my naïve little goddess. Love is fate." She peers down, down below the clouds, down to Washington D.C. where she knows in a two years, a boy and a girl will be born to two families – two very different families indeed, but that all makes for a better story. "Third time's a charm, my darlings," she murmurs. She sets her elbows on the mother-of-pearl armrests and her chin in her palms, sighing. "Don't let me down."

* * *

**Author's Note:** The Lethe is the river of forgetfulness (there is a pool at the end of it too). Further note; the Fates do not go out of their way to regulate where two people are born or whether they meet, but the Lethe insures that no memories of the past life remain.

As it stands, it looks like Part Three may actually be longer than Part Two. I know that sounds obscene, and trust me, it is an obscene process writing it. At the very least, it'll be around the same length. The important thing, I hope, is quality. Thank you so much for the wonderfully expressive reviews, and you know it makes me glad when you say I've done a good job!


	4. Part Three, 1st

**Author's Note:** The first part of Part Three. If that makes sense.

Three

by

Icy Roses

* * *

**Part Three (1)**

* * *

"_What is hardest of all? That which seems most simple: to see with your eyes what is before your eyes." _**– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe**

...

On the eastern edge of Washington D.C., there is a rickety old swing set that sits right in the middle of two school districts. The world is high-tech, everything moves quickly, and it's all rush, rush, rush, but for children – well, some things never change.

It's a blustery autumn day, the sky overhead a crisp October blue. It's the perfect kind of day for apple picking and leaf-raking. The park is overpopulated with children in sweaters and sweatpants, playing tag on the creaking bridge and jumping off of the swings. A girl walks up the sidewalk clutching her Princess Tiana lunchbox. Her skinned knee is oddly out of place with her pleated gray skirt, knee-high stockings, white collared shirt and light blue and gray sweater vest. Her pristine blond hair, though, is coming out of its tight pigtails. She shivers as the wind raises goose bumps on her pale skin. It's obvious that she's never been to this playground before – hasn't ever gone this far away from her neighborhood, actually. She looks around shyly, as if waiting for someone to introduce her to the place, but no one volunteers.

Painfully aware of her foreignness to her surroundings, she walks past the rowdy groups of boys wrestling, throwing bits of tires everywhere, and straight to her favorite part of any playground – the swings. She sets her lunchbox down by the wooden frame and scoots up on the seat. She's so short that her toes barely skim the ground when she pushes off. But something goes wrong. "Wait!" she protests. "Stop it! That's mine!"

A bully grabs her lunchbox when she isn't looking and dangles it in front of his friends. "Finders keepers," he taunts. "Should've been faster, little princess girl." The others laugh and give him high-fives. They're fifth graders, and the girl is only in first. "She doesn't look like a Crawley Elementary kid," the bully with the lunchbox comments. "She shouldn't even be here. Go on, baby. Get!"

She slides off the swing. Tears gather in her eyes, but she doesn't wipe them away. She takes a step forward. "Give it back," she demands.

"Hey," a new boy says, around her age, maybe a year older says. He's wearing scuffed tennis shoes, shorts, and a ratty chess sweatshirt. The girl has a hard time believing this boy plays chess. "Why don't you give her stuff back? You don't want to mess with the rich ones. They'll call the police on you."

"Get out of my beeswax," the bully snarls. "Go find your own stuff."

"I'm telling you to give the girl her lunchbox back. Or do you want the lunchbox because it has a twinkly, pretty Disney princess on it, you pansy?"

"Kid, you're just asking to get your face rearranged today," the bully says, dropping the lunchbox and lunging toward him. The boy skirts to one side nimbly, grabs the lunchbox off of the ground, and before the bully even notices what has happened – notices that his fist hasn't made contact with anything but air – the boy has grabbed the girl's hand, and shouted, "Run!" They are sprinting down the lane, away from the playground, and in between the houses where the yards meet in a line of double green. She is surprisingly sure-footed through the grass. They keep going until the yelling dies behind them and the girl is sobbing for breath. They slow to a stop and lean up against the vinyl side of a house, sliding down. The boy hands over the lunchbox.

"Thanks," the girl says.

"No problem. So what's your name, huh?"

"Lizzy."

"I'm Jamie," he tells her and sticks out his hand. It's dirty, but she shakes it anyway and grins. "Where are you from? Not around here, I'll bet. You one of the kids who goes to the other school?"

"I'm a first-grader at Sidwell Friends," Lizzy says proudly.

Jamie glances at her clothes and smirks. "Yeah, I figured. You look like one of those kids. I'm second-grade. Crawley, like those boys. They're dumb though; nobody likes them. They hog the playground all to themselves. What are you doing all the way out here? Sidwell is that way. And I know you don't live here. You probably live in one of those big, white houses with huge windows."

The way he says it makes it sound like it's somewhere to be ashamed of, so Lizzy doesn't comment one way or another. Her house _is_ pretty big. And white. With lots of windows. She blushes a little, twirling a loose curl around her finger. Her sparkly bobby pins have fallen out. "I'm running away from home," she says matter-of-factly.

He stops messing with his fraying shoelace and peers up at her through his scraggly, uncut black hair. "You?" he repeats, bemused. "Running away from home?"

"Yeah," she says defensively.

He's laughing. "Why? What could you be running away from? Too much money? Too much food? Too much of a good thing? Nobody who goes to Sidwell Friends runs away from home. Only people like me do that."

Her eyes are as wide as tea saucers. "You're running away from home?" Lizzy can't help but be impressed by this worldly stranger, a year older than her, a lifetime wiser.

"I don't have much of a home," he says, kicking a rock rolling down the hill and into someone else's property. "My ma's not around that much – she works a lot. So I get to go all over D.C. and nobody watches me do anything. I have an uncle who drops by sometimes, but it's always on weekends, so I come back so he doesn't send the cops after me."

Lizzy processes this. She didn't know people like him existed in the world. "So…if you're running away from home too, can I come with you? I don't really know my way around the city. You could help me, right?"

The boy, Jamie, glances over at her. "Who, me? Nah. Can't do that. If I take a little girl along with me, people will get suspicious, like I'm kidnapping you or trying to sell you drugs or something."

"What drugs? Like Tylenol?" she asks.

"Not exactly, kid."

She looks at him expectantly, trying to absorb his infinite wisdom all at once.

Jamie cranes his neck up at the sky. "Dang, I've lost track of the time. Don't you think you're parents are going to be looking for you? You should probably get home."

"That's the point of running away. I don't want to go home. Duh." She says this as if it is the most obvious statement in the world.

"You have to go home. I already helped you out. I'm seven. I can't do anything else for you." He stands up and brushes the dirt off of the sleeves of his sweatshirt and sticks out a hand to help her up.

She sighs and pats her stomach. Her legs are stiff and her knee stings. She needs a Band-Aid and a cup of hot chocolate. The first stars have begun to twinkle into the peach-purple twilight sky. "Okay. I guess I'll try again later. I'm kind of hungry." She accepts Jamie's hand as he pulls her to her feet.

"I'll help you get back," he says. "Where do you live?"

"3749 Lincoln Street." Suddenly, she remembers what he said about her big, white house with windows, and she feels ashamed to admit she lives in the neighborhood she does. Besides, it's a gated community. She has a feeling he'd make fun of it. "No, that's okay," she says. "I can find my way back."

"You sure?"

"Positive," she says with a smile. They return to the sidewalk. Down the street, the playground has emptied, except for a few swirling leaves. The bullies are gone. She glances wistfully at the swing set, but it's already five o'clock or later. Her family always eats dinner at six, on the dot. She'll be in big trouble if she's not home by then.

Awkwardly, Jamie fixates on the ground with his hands in his pockets.

"I like your sweatshirt," Lizzy tells him to break up the silence. "I like to play chess. My daddy taught me last year. One day, I want to join the chess team. You play chess for the team at your school?"

"Nah," he says, waving his hand. "I stole it. The sweatshirt, I mean." He grins at her.

"Oh." She isn't sure how to feel about this. Stealing is a bad thing. The teachers said that on the first day of school. But Jamie isn't bad. He helped her get her lunchbox back. Maybe he knows something she doesn't. Yes, she decides in her head. That's what it must be. It must be something kids learn in second grade. She just hasn't gotten to it yet.

"Well, I guess you should go," he says. "Don't want the servants to catch you coming in late."

"I don't have servants."

"It's a joke, Lizzy."

Personally, she doesn't think it's very funny. Or maybe she doesn't get it. He turns to leave, dragging his feet a little, the way shy kids do when they shuffle down the halls. "Bye," she says to his back. "Hey, does this mean we're friends now?"

He looks over his shoulder, and he's got a real smile on his face this time. "Sure. Maybe I'll see you around then, huh?"

She nods, and chirps brightly, "Okay!"

When she goes home that night, her parents send her to bed right after dinner as a punishment, so she lies awake under the covers and wonders where Jamie lives. All of her friends live in the gated community and go to Sidwell Friends. She can't wait to tell them about the new boy who goes to Crawley, travels all over Washington D.C., and _steals_ things. She'll be the coolest girl in school. Everybody will ask her questions, and she'll be able to tell the story again and again. She sighs and snuggles deeper, falling into a dreamless sleep.

..o..

The heat of the summer has begun to drain away in the wake of Persephone's preparation for her entrance to the Underworld. The trees have taken on a sharper autumn scent from their mellow summer one. The oak trees let off helicopters to fly far and wide on the wind until they land in a backyard miles away. At Camp Half-Blood, the last of the strawberry crop is being harvested, and vans pull away from the border every morning, taking demigods from the safety cocoon of their summer haven to the real world, where monsters await and worse – the prospect of getting a job.

"I'm not," James says flatly to his best friend Marty. "Absolutely, that's a no."

The numbers of demigods ebb and flow every year, but they stay pretty steady for the most part. There are about a hundred and fifty, and as they "graduate" at eighteen, many of them are eager to stay at camp in order to be counselors, especially the ones who have grown attached to the place, starting out young, or the ones who are not eager to go out into the mortal world and make a living. At Camp Half-Blood, it's a couple hours of instruction, dealing with rowdy teenagers that pretty much have their own system of martial law, a bed to sleep on, and three square meals a day. There are a few counselors that Chiron has to push out of the camp borders when the time comes. Twenty-seven is the age limit; then, it's out.

James and Marty both hit their birthdays this summer. The difference is Marty Coolidge is a recent law grad from NYU and signed with a prestigious firm in the Florida Keys for property litigation.

James Fording on the other hand – well, James Fording is not.

"Come on," Marty says, shouldering his bag, and preparing to get on the van. "It's just a brand new adventure, that's all. You'd get sick of living at Camp eventually. Don't you want to hit play on your life and move on?"

"Uh, no, not really," James says. "Dude, you're got a degree and everything. I have a GED, remember? I'd be lucky if I could get a job flipping burgers at McDonalds."

Marty shoves the rest of his stuff in the trunk and shuts it. He sits in the lip on the back. "Well, you could always go back to college."

"Maybe," James says, but only to placate his friend. He would never think about going back to college. Study? Spend hours on end struggling through mountains of books? Thanks, but no thanks. Chiron has said before that James has one of the worst cases of dyslexia he's ever seen. James doesn't doubt it one bit. He hates reading. He hates even reading five-hundred word newspaper articles. Last time he checked, college involved a lot of reading, and also – a lot of money. "I'm a son of Hermes," he says with a grin. "I'll make do. We always do."

Marty gets in the van. "I worry about you."

"Don't. I'll find my way," he replies nonchalantly. His heart is sinking, but he's not about to admit it. "I spent most of my childhood wandering around random places and jacking food and clothes. I can do it again."

"Don't you want more out of your life than that?"

Momentarily, James feels irritated. The last couple years of his life has been lecture after lecture, about his so-called "potential," and how he can "make something of himself." His response? Fuck that. Life is about having fun and getting by. He doesn't want to be tethered to some lame nine-to-five, working in a cramped cubicle, and typing out his days until he ends up getting carpal tunnel, goes blind, and ending up in a retirement home and realizing he's never done anything for himself. He doesn't _need_ to make something of himself. But this is the end of the summer, he thinks, swimming back to the present where Marty is waiting to shut the door and drive to sunny Florida, make a shit load of money, marry a beautiful girl, and have babies. _That's Marty for you. Big house, family, kids, and a couple of cars – the ideal life for a son of Hera. Boring,_ James thinks. _Completely mind-numbing._

He shakes Marty's hand. "All right, man. You better be on your way. And wipe that look off of your face. It's a brand new beginning for me."

"I hope so," Marty mutters. "Don't be a stranger, okay? My door's always open."

"I'll look you up if I ever head down there," James assures him. He watches, a little sadly, as the van drives away. Marty was the last of the counselors to stay, and he did it because he had a sense of responsibility to the camp, not because he wanted to bum off the camp's food and living space. James would almost feel guilty about his freeloading, except he's never felt guilty about anything in his life. No, sir, he's a forward-looking individual, and his future is all ahead of him.

The kids are so much younger than him, and it makes him feel a bit out of place as he shoves all of his money and clothes into a small suitcase and layers his coats so he doesn't have to carry them. Some of them run by and say their farewells. He'd be lying if he said it didn't make him the tiniest bit sad. He's seen some of these kids go from their awkward, pimply pre-teen stages to normal, proportional humans. It'll be – a change, that's for sure, to disappear all of a sudden. Then, it only takes about fifteen minutes, for him to pack up, and before he knows it, he's standing at the top of the hill, his hand gently stroking the pine needles of Thalia's tree – the sign of home he'll never forget. He realizes that he doesn't even know where he's going. Besides Camp Half-Blood, he neither knows nor likes any place else. Except, well – Washington D.C. He grew up there, after all, learned all of the tools of his trade. Maybe he'll head back to his old hometown and see how things are kicking down south.

He's about to leave when a gaggle of Hunters appear behind him and whisk past him into camp without so much as an acknowledgement. He rolls his eyes. Dumb girls. They drop by occasionally, he's heard, but they've never done it for the years he's been there. And from what he's heard of them, that's probably a good thing. Quite a few turn to give him the stink eye as they glide down the hill. He knows his life has sunk to an all-time low when fourteen-year-old girls are looking at him as if he's a pervert, even though it's only by virtue of the fact that he inherited the Y-chromosome, as if that's his fault too. But he does a rather good job of ignoring them, until the head Hunter passes, holding up the end. When she looks full into his face, she stops dead in her tracks with a sharp intake of breath.

The girls stop where they are. "Are you okay?"

The Hunter looks to be about sixteen, a pixie cut of black hair on her head and ice-blue eyes. James shifts on his feet, feeling as if she is piercing his soul with her gaze. He's kind of offended by her open gaping. Does he have a mole sprouting out of his chin or something? "What are you staring at?" he snaps. "Just move along, okay? Nothing to see here, just a specimen of the male species; we make up about fifty percent of the population, so there's lots of other ones to stare at."

One of the other girls makes a disgusted noise in her throat. "Come on, Thalia. This guy's an even bigger tool than the ones we usually meet." The second-in-command grabs her wrist and tugs.

"Yeah," the one named Thalia says weakly. "I – um – I need to talk to Chiron. Stat." And she trails away with the rest, but he notices she keeps glancing over her shoulder at him like she's seen a zombie. Hunters, he thinks. They've always been the weirdest bunch.

..o..

"You're attending the White House ball this weekend, aren't you?" It's almost seven o'clock, and the dying rays of sunlight filter into the empty office.

Liza tucks a few sheaves of paper into her leather briefcase and zips it up. She blows a fallen curl of hair out of her face. Her colleague, Beatrice Barnes, holds her coffee thermos and her purse, waiting for the answer to her question.

"You know I'm not, Bea. I have to work on Sunday. I just got hired a month ago, and I want to make sure I do everything right. There's just so much stuff to sort through from the last administration that the new one wants to rectify and put in new policies and—"

Bea shakes her head, sets the thermos down on the tiny desk in the cramped cubicle, and helps her gather the rest of her stuff. "Jeez, you have to take a breather sometime. It makes me stressed just looking at you. Do you ever take any days off? No, don't—" she makes Liza set her laptop back on the desk—"you are not taking that home. It's Friday! Go find yourself a date and have a night on the town. I will not let you sit at your dinner table and do _this_ all night."

Liza buttons up her dark red coat and launches into her routine feminist declaratives, "I don't have time for men in D.C. They're all so stuck up and think they're so much better than you. Like I haven't worked my whole life – well, my whole twenty-six years – for this job. I am a professional. My career is everything I want it to be, and I'm not about to settle down and pop out some babies for some unemployed bum or some sleazy politician – and don't think I haven't gotten any offers either."

Bea rolls her eyes. "Yeah, yeah, as if I haven't heard this schpeal before. Okay, we get it, Liza. We all know you worked hard for this job. I just don't understand why you settled for some low-level secretarial job at the Department of Education when you could be working as a high up in any sector in the government. Seriously, I mean, your dad is Senator Allen. Everyone would be scrambling to hire you if you put yourself out there on the job market. You could do better than this."

It's a long day, and Liza doesn't argue. She's gone over this a million times; basically, every time someone finds out she's Robert Allen's daughter, they go crazy, asking her what it's like to have such close connections to Congress, have such close connections to the President. It's no secret that Senator Allen and the President have been friends for a long time. It doesn't help at all that Senator Allen is always dropping hints of his family life – they call him the family man, the one who would never stray from his loving wife and beautiful daughter. Liza hates being used as fodder for her father's public image. It's what comes of having a politician as a dad, but the senator really milks it for all it's worth. She can't even remember the last time she spoke to him on the phone, even though they live in the same city. Maybe Christmas? Her mother is a bit of a socialite, all flashy smiles for the camera and nine hundred dollar gowns, and doesn't approve of her daughter's grubby, governmental work. Of course, the senator and his wife will be attending the ball. And for that reason mainly, Liza will not.

"Try not to think of anything work-related," Bea suggests. "For tonight. If you're not going to hit the town, then at least go rent a movie and veg out on the couch. Please. For me. I don't want you burning out within the year. You're one of the best here. You never slack off. I'm starting to think you're unnatural."

"Thanks," Liza says dryly. "I'll try to act more lazy and natural for you." She shoulders her bag, and together, they leave the building. She grabs Metro and takes it all the way home, thinking maybe tonight she'll actually take a nice bath and pamper herself a bit – but tomorrow, she'll get up early and figure out the latest tangle at work. Everyone is in a tizzy about the ball this weekend – apparently, it's in honor of some foreign prince – and it's affected everyone's capacity to do anything remotely work-related. Liza isn't one to get distracted by the promise if visiting royalty. She's lived in D.C. practically her whole life, minus grad school at Columbia University in New York, and foreign dignitaries, political scandals, and lavish parties are no longer new to her anymore. She's got more important things to worry about.

..o..

Four months later, James has gotten to D.C. all right. He has also failed to find any kind of employment – although, not all of it can be blamed on the fact that he has no technical skill; after all, he didn't try very hard to get that job. He's found two demigods and sent them on their way to camp (a daughter of Demeter and a son of Hebe), which is probably the biggest accomplishment he's had so far in this city.

It's right smack in the middle of winter, and he is absolutely freezing his ass off. He's thinking he should've decided to be homeless in Georgia or maybe Texas, but definitely not D.C. What possessed him to be here again? The only thing he can truly count himself grateful for is his heritage. If he weren't a son of Hermes, he probably would've died by now. As it is, he's done well enough doing petty theft and begging the rest of the way. He's got no qualms against tricking people out of their money either. Loose morals mean a full stomach. People like him can't afford to stick to the high road.

Once, for no particular reason, he wandered back into his old neighborhood to see if he could find his broken down one-floor house. But construction in D.C. is always on the move, and the only thing he encounters is a new neighborhood, pristine with block houses lined in strings of Christmas lights; they all look the same, but never mind that. The lot where his old place stood is now a spanking new condo. The lights are on, merry and warm against the frosty windows, and he can only hope that the inhabitants inside are a happy family enjoying dinner together.

He wanders through the streets, finds an alley, starts a fire and warms his hands. He'll need a new pair of gloves soon. A scarf too, he thinks. It's good policy to put out the fire before falling asleep in order to not set things aflame, but he's too cold to care about what's legal and what's good policy. So in a haze of wintry stiffness and sheer tiredness, he slips into fitful sleep, not really ever going fully into darkness. He'll wake when the sun brushes the tops of the buildings a pale peach and streaks the sky a lighter gray. That's what he expects, anyway.

So it's not exactly the best of moods he wakes to when four hours later, a teenage girl pokes him, standing above him with her hands on her hips. He blinks, thinking he's still locked in a dream. "Can I help you?" he murmurs, skimming the edge of coherence.

Her eyes are ringed with heavy black eyeliner – they make her eyes even brighter feverish blue. And she is studying him with extreme intensity. He feels as if he is a bug that has been pinned on a corkboard to be examined by scientists. "Bleargh," he says. She looks a bit familiar, as if he's seen her somewhere before – oh, yes! "Hunter. You're one of the Hunters, aren't you?" He can't imagine why she's come here to find him, in the shadier section of Washington D.C.

She nods. She kneels so she's closer to his height. "Percy Jackson," she says. "I've found you at last. It's been a couple hundred years. And wow, are you a poor excuse for a human being in this lifetime."

…And it's way too early in the morning for him to process that in his head. He sits up, rubbing his forehead and realizing he really needs a shave. He thinks there's some kind of insult buried in her statement, but he's not conscious enough to pick it out and make sense of it. "What?" he says, none too articulately. Then, he lets his brain do a little bit of catching up with his ears. "What did you call me?"

"Percy Jackson," she repeats. "It's taken me months to find you, after Chiron told me you had left for good, and that – jeez, you're reborn as a son of Hermes? What is that? Anyway, he said you were probably wandering around the country like a no-good jobless hobo, and that you grew up here, so I figured D.C. would be the best bet."

She looks so sure about it. He coughs and rubs his hands together. The fire has gone out. "I'm not really sure what you're talking about, actually," he says. "I'm James Fording. Chiron knows that."

"Oh, no," she said with a shake of the head and a sigh. "This'll be harder than I thought. You don't remember a thing, do you?"

He is more and more baffled by this punk teenager, who has stalked him up and down the country, woken him up, and is now insisting that he is this strange person he's never even heard of. He's starting to think she's some child of Mr. D's who has gone seriously haywire. "What do you mean? Like of my childhood? I have a pretty decent memory."

"No, I mean, of your past life. You don't remember it."

Yep, it's official. The girl is off of her rocker. "How old are you, kiddo? Like fourteen? Like you would remember me in a past life, if I even had one." He's pretty skeptical about the last part anyway. Reincarnations or whatever. That stuff is way too existential for him to think about. He hasn't considered what will happen when he dies. Probably the Fields of Asphodel. He's got no high aspirations.

She wrinkles her nose, obviously annoyed that he has just used the word "kiddo" to describe her. "First of all, if you continue speaking to me as if I'm four, I'm going to have to punch you in the nose, Percy or not. Second, I'm almost sixteen. Third, in real years I guess you could say I'm actually three hundred and five. So yeah, I would say I have a good grasp on your past life, buddy." She bumps her shoulder against his, and it sends him back onto his butt. "You are definitely him."

He considers her for a moment, all fierce determination and snappy movements, the very opposite of how he does things. It's averse to his personality. "I think you have the wrong guy," he says with finality, leaning back into the wall.

The Hunter seems unperturbed, as if she hasn't heard him at all. Slowly though, she rises and towers above him. "Don't be so sure. You can't be meant for this. If I know anything, I know that you aren't supposed to be a homeless man, frittering away your life. And if you're here, then I know…" She looks off into the distance. "I'm going to prove it to you," she tells him. "So you don't wander anywhere else, you hear?"

He shrugs, noncommittal. Yes, what he really needs right now is another person getting on his case. Who the hell is she that he has to listen to what she says? He never even listened to his own damn mother.

"By the way, my name is Thalia. So you can please use my name from now on. I'll be back." Just like that, she slips off.

"Hey, wait," he says, startled, seizing on a random fact that has just crossed his mind. "Thalia – like Thalia's pine tree at Camp Half-Blood?"

"The very same!" she calls from the corner. "That's my tree." She grins a feral grin, and then, she's gone. And he's left marveling what Thalia, the girl of legend, is doing hunting down a little nobody like him.

His mind is troubled with questions. He can't decide whether he should leave D.C. or not.

..o..

The next time Thalia the Hunter finds James, he is sitting on a park bench, watching the children playing on a rusty old swing set, melting snow dripping off the overhead beam in trickles. She is by herself again, and he is shoving the last bit of a Hostess snack in his mouth. The past few months have been difficult, but now it's spring, and the cherry blossoms are starting to bloom. It means the tourists are coming, and he can start selling himself as a tour guide to make money that way. He knows all of jack shit about the historical sites in D.C. but neither do the tourists, so it works. He thought about leaving, but he couldn't miss spring. It is a major jackpot he wouldn't be able to snag part of in any other city.

Thalia, her bangs just sweeping over her eyes, approaches him, businesslike as usual. "Hello," she says. "Found you again."

"I'm going to have to issue a restraining order against you," he says, finishing off the last bit of his Twinkie.

She has a look of vague revulsion on her face watching him licking off the wrapper. "If you didn't look exactly like that idiot son of Poseidon, I would've swore I made a mistake. You are nothing like him. Gods. And Chiron thought you had potential. I wonder if Chiron has _seen_ you in action over here." She sits down on the bench next to him, but not too close.

"All right," he says, dusting the crumbs off his hands. "Say what you have to say, Hunter girl. I'm used to your crazy ramblings now. Son of Poseidon thing? That would be pretty sweet I have to admit. Any way you can reactivate my awesome water powers?"

She makes a disgusted noise.

He shrugs. "Okay. I tried."

Thalia collects herself, reaches into the pocket of her dark, skinny jeans, and fishes out a business card. She shoves it at him, black nail polish gleaming on short, clipped fingernails. He regards it for a second, and then takes it out of her hand. It is on heavy, cream cardstock, nice quality, obviously for someone kind of important. "What's this?"

"Read it, and you'll see."

The writing on the paper is block print, no fancy script. It says: _Liza Allen – Department of Education, Capital Division, (483) 385 – 2839_. He reads it over and over. "Um, Thalia?"

"Yeah?" She's tapping her feet together and staring at her lap, waiting for some great revelation from him.

"I have no idea what you're doing, if this is some kind of joke or whatever, but this business card"—he shakes it between two fingers—"tells me absolutely nothing. Liza Allen? Who is this girl? Am I supposed to know her?"

Thalia has furrowed her eyebrows and sat up straighter. "You mean you don't know who she is?" She looks slightly crestfallen.

"No!" He's flipping the card over, running his fingers over it, as if there might be a secret identifier that will clue him in as to who the woman is. But the card is just a card, straightforward and ordinary. "The woman works for the Department of Education. The federal government? Do you think someone like me could possibly know someone like her? Look at me!" He gestures down at the way he's dressed, which includes a shoe that has a missing tongue. Even Thalia has to admit that someone like James would be lucky if he even accidentally bumped into someone like Liza Allen on the Metro.

She sighs. "The gods just really don't want this to work out, do they? I know you think I'm not fully sane—"

He snorts.

"—but hear me out, okay?" She takes a deep breath. "In a past life, this girl's name was Annabeth Chase. You…knew each other. Really well."

James shoves the wrapper in his pocket – he doesn't litter, after all – and stares at the kids swinging on the swing set. "Annabeth Chase," he repeats.

Thalia looks at him eagerly. "Do you remember?"

He puts a hand on his chin and strokes his imaginary (but soon to be real) beard. "Hmmm." He pauses dramatically. Then—"Nope. Name does not ring a bell at all. If I knew her really well, don't you think it would? Look, the fact of the matter is, all of this past life mumbo-jumbo is freaking me out, and I don't think you're going to be able to convince me of your big, bright plan for me. Why are you so attached to helping me remember anyway? Is this a Quest of yours? Do Hunters even have Quests?"

She punches him in the arm.

"Ow!"

"I'm doing this because I'm your _friend_, even though you don't know it," she snaps.

"You got that right," he says resentfully. "Some friend you are." They sit in silence for a while. She chews her lip thoughtfully, and he watches the swings, a tiny something niggling at his brain, trying to remind him of something. Of swings? He doesn't remember. Anyway, this is the end of it. Thalia has the wrong person. He is more and more sure of it the longer he sits.

She clasps her hands together on her lap like she suddenly has stumbled upon a brilliant idea. "Why don't you come with me, and we find her?"

"Oh, no," he groans. "Not again. You mean I haven't convinced you yet that I have no inkling whatsoever of this girl – Liza Allen? You want me to get arrested for following a government employee? My life really couldn't get much worse, but thanks for the offer, Thalia."

"Exactly," she says, a gleam in her eye. "You're life isn't getting worse from here. Come on, give it a chance. Who knows? Maybe she'll remember, and – don't you think it would be beneficial to be friends with someone who works for the government on your side? Take a chance on it. You're always up for an adventure. Or at least, you used to be." She leans toward him expectantly, urging him to seize the challenge.

And her words are pulling on his soul, reminding him of back when he got his first Quest…but no. The past is in the past. He shakes it off. This is where he is now. Is he ready to set himself on this wild goose chase for a girl he can't remember, counting on the assurances of a Hunter he doesn't know? There was a time when he would've said yes in a split second. Like a plant brushing off the last remnants of a winter snow, his imagination and memory stretches. Annabeth Chase, huh? Well, he doesn't know an Annabeth Chase or a Liza Allen. He is almost positive Thalia has it wrong. But it also seemas like Thalia might be willing to keep him well-fed and buy him some new clothes, so at least he'll get that out of it. "Sure," he says. "Let's give it a shot. I wouldn't get your hopes up, though. I don't think you've got it right."

He stands up and pulls Thalia with him. "We'll see," she says, grinning from ear to ear. "I'll bet you'll be eating your words one day."

"Where do we go from here?" he asks, looking around. "You know where Liza Allen hangs out?"

Thalia leads the way. "Yeah – she's hanging out at a job, unlike you. I know where the building is."

"Hey, don't knock on my unemployed status! It's the economy, don't you know?"

"Yeah, right."

..o..

It's about six thirty when they reach the headquarters of the Department of Education. Like everything else in the capital, it has the classic marble stairs leading up to the columned façade and tall wooden doorway. It looks more like a memorial than an office building. James, of course, has never been inside, never even dreamed of it. Thalia drums her fingers against the railing.

"How did you find this Liza Allen anyway?" James asks as they wait for the employees to file out.

"She's the daughter of Senator Allen of Virginia. Everyone knows him. His wife is like two spots away from the throne of some country in Europe, a small one. And he – well, he's just loaded. He talks about his daughter all the time in the news. Sometimes, Liza shows up for social events that this administration is known for throwing. The galas and stuff." She raises her eyebrow at him. "I take it from the look you're giving me that you don't follow politics much, do you?"

"Not really a political kind of guy."

"Right. Anyway, so I saw her picture on the news, and I recognized her. It was just chance that I ran into you last year. The business card? I managed to nab one off her desk."

James rolls his eyes and leans into the rail casually. "What you're saying is – the girl's got no gods forsaken clue who you are. And you're expecting her to talk to a homeless demigod and a fifteen-year-old girl dressed like some punk ass rebel? That sounds plausible. We'll be exceptionally lucky if she doesn't call security in point-five seconds."

"Have a little faith, will you?"

"Yeah, yeah," he mutters. The sun has begun to set later in the day, but after an hour, it has started to set, nonetheless. It's a chilly spring evening. James shivers and wonders if Liza wouldn't mind buying him a jacket if she doesn't end up sending him to jail. He doesn't have a clue what she looks like, but it seems like Thalia knows. Several young pretty women filter out of the building – apparently, the Department of Education is where the babes are – but Thalia doesn't bat an eyelid at any of them. She watches the door like a hawk. James hopes there isn't some kind of back door to this building, and they missed her. It's almost eight, when he finally says, "Are you sure she works here? What kind of woman in her right mind stays this late at the office? Didn't you say the work day officially ends at six? She's two hours late."

"She's a workaholic!" She pulls the hair from in front of her face. "Always was," she says softly.

"I was good friends with a workaholic?" he asks. "I must've had it going in another life."

The sarcasm is plainly lost on his companion. "You did," she says, solemn as a stone. Her certainty about every part of his personality, his likes, his dislikes, his habits, is unsettling and weird. He doesn't like it, not at all. He didn't think it was possible, but Thalia just might be holding some blackmail on him that he doesn't even know about. It's not a very good feeling to have. And he has to wonder why he was ever friends with a Hunter? Unless he was a girl in a past life…

"Shhhh, here she comes!" Thalia hisses.

James looks up to see what kind of girl they're dealing with here, expecting a mousy, scrawny governmental worker with a bit of a slouch (that's what he's thinking when Thalia says "workaholic"). The woman walking down the steps is nothing like that. She's wearing a plaid Burberry coat with a smart leather briefcase and conservative black pumps. Her curly golden hair is tied back in a ponytail. "That's her?" he whispers out of the side of his mouth. "She sure is—"

"Can I help you?" the blonde woman asks. "I'm sorry – walk in hours are over, but if it's something urgent—"

"—yes," Thalia interjects. "We were looking for you, actually."

Liza is surprised. "Really? Do I know you?"

"Kind of," Thalia says, which is blatantly the wrong answer, because how can you _kind of_ know someone?

James steps in front of Thalia. "Well, no, you don't really know us. But we did want to talk to you."

"Um, okay," she says. She peers around him. "Is she your daughter?"

James almost chokes. "Oh, gods, _no_. How old do I look to you?"

Liza takes a step back. "I'm sorry. Didn't mean to offend you. I just thought maybe you were a teenage father or something – look, never mind. What am I supposed to think? She's with you, you're with her, you've come to the Department of Education…" She's flustered and starting to step away. But even so, she's still a professional at heart, it seems. She glances up at the sky, then at the watch on her wrist. "Please, just tell me what is going on. I've had a long day and I would really, really like to go home."

"You see, Thalia? The woman's had a long day, and she wants to go home. Let's just leave her—"

"Hang on," Liza interrupts. She leans closer. "I do know you! I can't believe it. It's been so many years, and you look so different."

Thalia is grinning. "You see? I knew she'd remember—"

"Jamie!" she exclaims. "Of course." She claps her hands together and drops the briefcase. "I would never forget your face." She is beaming.

For a moment, James is temporarily thrown off course. And then it dawns on him. "You're Lizzy, the girl at the playground who went to Sidwell Friends. You're the senator's daughter? I had no idea."

A cloud passes over her expression, but it clears. "Yes, although back then, my father was only in state government. He is, ah, always moving up in the world, I guess." Her smile softens. "I never forgot that day. Even though after a month, my parents stopped letting me go out, because they suspected I was going to the bad side of town."

A memory – a sadness. Yes, James remembers. One day, Lizzy stopped coming to the playground, and then, eventually, he stopped going too. He forgot about her – almost – except that she was the only nice rich girl he ever met. He never forgot that. "That Princess Tiana lunchbox," he begins.

"My parents threw it out after a while," she says. "Trust me. I cried a lot over it."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."

They're smiling at each other, reliving childhood memories, when Thalia coughs. "This is not what I meant when I said, 'she'll remember,'" she says. "I meant to say…"

James can hear it coming – the total word vomit. He knows Thalia is going to do something idiotic, like spill the fact that they're descendents of the Greek gods, or the fact that he and Liza are actually Peter Johnson and Annabelle Chess (or whatever their names were supposed to be), or the fact that James is homeless (for some reason, he is ashamed of this now that he is standing in front of Lizzy). But at the same time, he can't actually bring himself to believe Thalia is dumb enough to do any of those things. Because you just don't tell mortals about gods and reincarnation and whatever else. James thinks it's weird enough. Lizzy might just either bust out laughing or have them all thrown into an asylum. He doesn't like either option, although being laughed at is better than being in a straitjacket, theoretically. He is thinking this all frantically as Thalia opens her mouth to say what she's got in her head, and then, he realizes a split second before she says it that this Hunter is _absolutely_ stupid enough to say this all in front of a mortal woman.

"…you two are reincarnations. We need to get your memories back."

James doesn't even attempt to curse, bury his face in his hands, or otherwise show any signs of disbelief and anger. Because there's nothing he can do to make this moment okay.

Liza, on the other hand, has swiveled around to stare openly at Thalia. "Jamie, who exactly is she?" Her eyes are wide as a doe's.

"I don't need him to introduce me," Thalia says. "I'm a Hunter of Artemis, the Greek goddess."

"Oh," Liza says weakly, staggering slowly down a few steps. "Oh."

"Now you've done it," James says grimly. "Just what in the hell do you think you're doing? Seeing as you're three hundred and something, shouldn't you know at this point, that it's supposed to be a _secret_? You can't _Mist away_ something like that!"

Liza has begun to retreat down the rest of the stairs backwards, shaking her head as if she's trying to block something out. "No," she says. "I—I need to go."

"Wait! I'm sorry. That's not – just ignore what she said. Forget it." He's waving his hand, trying to dismiss Thalia's words.

"No, I can't," Liza says. Her face has gone pale, her gray eyes glittery with fear. "I don't want to know. Please leave me alone. Jamie – I can't be a part of this." Her words throw him off-kilter. But there isn't time to consider their meaning, because she turns around and begins to run away, briefcase clutched to her chest. The pumps don't slow her down.

"Lizzy!" he shouts after her. But she doesn't even pause or look back. Her hair has fallen free from the clip, so he can't see her face. But if he had to guess, it would probably be confused and terrified. He watches her go, helpless to the sight and knowing he shouldn't follow her, but wanting to anyway. He wants to explain, but how do you explain a thing like that? He isn't sure he can even explain it to himself. Liza disappears around the corner. "Damn it!" He kicks the step above him. He whirls back on Thalia, who is standing there, subdued. "Was this your plan? To drag me over here and throw some conspiracy theory at us about how we need to get a lobotomy or something so we'll 'remember each other' and make things right again? Because you're doing a damn good job of fucking up my life right now. Hers too, it looks like. Did you see her face? She's a _mortal_."

Thalia takes this rant rather well and says calmly, "It doesn't matter."

"What?"

"I said, it doesn't matter. She's not just a normal mortal. Percy, she's a clear-sighted one, so she knows about our world. I can tell, just from the way she reacted, and besides, I knew already before. I wouldn't have risked it on a regular mortal. Plus, even if she doesn't remember, she is still Annabeth. It doesn't hurt to tell her that."

James is fed up. He's so mad he can't even think, and he was bad at controlling his temper to begin with. Trembling with anger, he backs away. "Don't call me Percy. My name is James, got it? I'm a son of Hermes. And I'm tired of you making me someone I'm not. Don't you have someone else's head to fuck with?"

He sprints down the rest of the steps and doesn't stop until he finds himself standing in front of the Metro. The muscles in his legs feel like they're dissolving and for the first time in years, he wants to cry – but he doesn't know why.

He just stands on the subway car and rides it around the map for four hours, watching people get on and off, because he can't think of a final destination.

* * *

**Author's Note:** I decided to split Part Three in half for two reasons. Firstly, you guys have been amazingly patient, and I know it's been a long time since I posted, between leaving the country for three weeks and settling into a new semester and whatever. I figured you would want to see some progress. Secondly, Part Three is like mind-numbingly long, so organizationally, I didn't think you would want me to throw 20,000+ words at you in one chunk. As you might suspect, the second part of Part Three will definitely be longer than this. Also, rest assured: it will be coming soon. Like, within a week or two, tops. I'm almost, almost done, and with some minor tweaks, it should be ready to go. (I know this seems like a cliff to leave you hanging on, but trust me, there were a lot worse places to cut it; I tried to make it as non-torturous as possible!) Thanks for sticking with the story! Here is a preview of the next part:

-

_It takes him a moment, but James finally processes the statement in his head. "You – what? What do you mean, _Quest_?"_

_"I mean, Quest," Thalia says. "The kind that demigods go on. The kind of demigods that aren't always trying to run away from their heritage, that is," she adds pointedly._

_"And what is that supposed to mean?" James glares. Gods, the girl can really be a pain in the ass sometimes._

_"Nothing," she says innocently, but just guiltily enough to mean she loaded her words with meaning. She's goading him. He is so not going to take the bait. _He's not going to take the bait. _He's not that stupid. "What makes you think I want to go on this Quest?"_

_"Because Chiron said you had to. I just got off I-M with him in the bathroom – "_

_"He I-M-ed you in the_ bathroom_? What, with the _toilet water_?"_

_-_

You guys are awesome! Thanks for reading!


	5. Part Three, 2nd

**Author's note:** It seems like Part Three is going to be too long to fit into two sections, and my OCD tendencies will not allow such blatantly uneven chapter lengths, so you get this first.

Three

by

Icy Roses

**Part Three (2)**

The restaurant is one of the classiest Italian ones in the city – _Il Picco_. Translated into English, it means The Peak, and it is certainly the peak of fine dining. People simply do not walk through the intricate glass doors without proper eveningwear. As much as Liza adores Italian food and adores Il Picco in general, tonight is not the best of nights for cheery, celebratory dinners. It's her birthday, and Bea insisted on taking her out for a nice meal and almost wrangled her into going clubbing, but thank goodness Liza managed to dodge that bullet. Bea swears, _we're not coming back to your apartment until you are drunker than a squirrel on jungle juice_, which doesn't sound pleasant in the slightest. Still, Liza puts on the little black dress, silver heels and earrings to meet Bea for dinner.

Of course, Bea failed to mention she also invited everyone who worked in any kind of proximity at the Department of Education. So Liza finds herself sitting at a table for twelve in a private dining room with a menu in one hand and messing nervously with her clutch in the other. She gives obligatory smiles for the others, but inside, she is all turmoil. She can't concentrate on anything, much less what dish she wants for dinner. After work, she figured nobody would be waiting for her on the steps today, but she snuck out the back just because.

Yesterday night, she had nightmares about the incident, the first time in years.

"Hey, Liza, why don't you tell them about that time you dropped the coffee on the papers? Wasn't that the first day?" Bea grins brightly. She leans toward Ryan, sitting next to her and promises, "It's a good story. Hilarious."

"Oh, that," Liza says. "I – oh, look the waiter is here." She bows her head again twirling her finger around and around her bracelet. What did that girl say? _The Greek goddess._ The thing is, Liza doesn't believe in that stuff. Or she has spent the last twenty years of her life trying very hard not to believe in it. She's got a steady job now, a future, and a fairly good life in the political center of the country. On the plus side, she thinks dryly, her father might stop mentioning her to the press all of the time if he finds out she's having the dreams again. Although, not even the reappearance of the dreams will convince her to call the senator. It's not like he's ever been good at offering comfort for what he's consistently termed her "hallucination problems."

If only they were just hallucinations.

"Why don't we order a round of prosecco?" Bea suggests. The waiter reappears moments later with a fresh bottle, pops open the cork, and produces elegant crystal glasses. Liza knows she can't allow everyone to pay her tab. These are government workers, not millionaires. She could afford it, if she drew from the bank account her parents opened for her. She hates using money that isn't what she explicitly earned herself, but sometimes, she can't avoid doing just that.

One thing is for sure. She is not going through psychological therapy again for "seeing things that do not exist." Because even though she went through it way back when with passively and with the most hopeful of intentions, therapy is useless. There isn't anything wrong with Liza's eyes – there's something wrong with everybody else's. For some reason, she can _see_ the mythology world blending so chaotically with the real one. Her whole life, she has been able to see monsters and once, she swears she saw a goddess, although she isn't sure which one. They can see her too. She's had a few close calls. After she went to high school, the therapist convinced her (she wanted to be convinced at the time) that everything she saw was the manifestation of an overactive imagination. She was fourteen, she wanted to be popular and fit in, and she didn't want to be known as the freak who saw the Boogeyman all the time. By and by, ignoring her Sight worked, and the monsters started ignoring her too. By the time she went to college, it was an occasional thing and mostly unobtrusive.

Now, though – Jamie and the Hunter had opened Pandora's box. She had two choices. She could either ignore them again and hope the dreams and the sightings would recede or she could dive in headfirst into a world that would destroy her respectable job and everything she'd worked for. She could embrace freak-dom and accept the world of mythology.

Hell to the no.

She feels slightly better about this decision. Bea, a little bit red – she's Asian and gets the Glow at the drop of a hat – raises her glass and says, "Let's toast! To our newest friend, Liza Allen. Welcome to the firm, baby." Liza smiles and lifts her own glass up to the light. The bubbles rise precociously, popping in progression at the top. She loves the way prosecco tickles her throat all the way down. Twelve people cheer and clink glasses and Liza downs hers in one gulp. She hasn't drank much in a while, but tonight's her birthday. She can have a little fun.

"More, more!" Nirupam insists, pouring her another glass. "It's your birthday. Your liver can still handle it until you're thirty."

Everyone laughs. The toasts fly thick and fast as new bottles are opened. For her birthday. For her arrival on the scene in D.C. For Il Picco. For Italian food. For wages. For alcohol. They get progressively more and more outlandish, even when the food comes. Liza has to be grateful that they're in a secluded room and not in public – the patrons of Il Picco probably wouldn't appreciate their rowdiness after the first hour.

She is laughing and flushed red when Nirupam raises his glass. "One last toast," he says rather sloppily. He's moved onto stronger stuff. He bangs his fork on the table and everyone quiets down. The dishes have been scraped clean and they're all waiting for dessert. "For Senator Allen."

Liza is in a good mood, but there is a small lurch in her stomach warning her about where this toast is going. She shakes it off. "Why's that?" she asks.

Nirupam's pupils dilate. "Why wouldn't we toast your father? He's a junior senator now and just named the head of the Committee of Foreign Relations, and we all know how connections work in D.C., don't we?" He winks at her and clinks the rim of his goblet with Bea, who has hit her uncontrollable giggles stage. "So hear, hear. For the Allens who always find a way to make the right friends and have the right family members – always moving upwards on the corporate ladder. We'll see how long we'll be able to keep our Liza here in Education before she moves on to bigger and better things."

Everyone mirrors him with a shout of "Hear, hear!" Liza smiles so hard she thinks he teeth might crack. Lead fills her insides. The haze in her head fades into a dull, bitter feeling. And then she feels irrationally angry. Is that what everyone in the office really thinks? She is only here because her father got her the job and it's only her _back-up plan_ until she gets a better one? The room becomes unbearably claustrophobic all at once.

Her head spins. "Hey," she says, more loudly than she means to. "I think I'm going to go outside and – uh – have a smoke." She stumbles out of her chair, pushes it in so it makes that squeaky noise against the tile floor.

"You don't smoke," Bea says bemusedly.

This is true. Liza never claimed to be the best at making excuses. "I need some air. Just – I'll be outside."

"Aw man, we can't have the cake without you!" Beth exclaims.

She is at the doorway. "Don't worry about it. Just dig in. I'll be back when I feel up to it, okay? Not a big deal." And she's shut the door, away from the nauseating laughter and carousing. She weaves through tables for two and four, past waitresses carrying trays stacked precariously with food, all on impossibly high, thin silver stilettos. The outside air is a bit chilly, but it wakes her up. She doesn't want to stand in front of the restaurant on the sidewalk, so she slips to the side into the alley between Il Picco and a flower shop.

There, she leans against the brick wall, slowly sliding down – no doubt ruining the fabric of her dress – and begins to cry. It's a shit idea since she didn't swipe on waterproof mascara and it'll be great fun explaining away the raccoon eyes when she goes back inside. Plus, it's absolutely pathetic. Liza hates crying. It's futile and doesn't fix any problems. But here she is, being a loser, and prostrate in an alley, wracked in sobs. It's lucky the alley is secluded and quiet. Nobody wanders back there without purpose.

At least, that's what she thinks, before a rustle sounds from the collection of garbage cans at the dead end. Perhaps, she decides, it's just a stray cat. But then, a looming figure rises, shrouded in shadow. The lids of the cans clatter onto the ground. The thing moves with a single full-bodied motion – like a snake. It slithers out from behind the cans and straightens to its full height. It shifts into the dingy yellow cast of the streetlight from overhead.

Liza screams –

..o..

Inevitably, he finds himself hanging around the playground. The swings are quiet and empty. Miserably, he sits down at the bench and wonders what he's going to do now. It didn't seem to matter all that much before. Maybe it's time for a change of scene. A move to warmer climes? D.C. sucks in the winter.

James taps his foot aimlessly against the pavement as if he's waiting, but he doesn't know what he's waiting for. Yesterday, he drove away Liza Allen. He is really more upset about this than he needs to be. Yesterday, he ran away from Thalia. He is actually quite pleased about this, but the lack of a pestering, delusional Hunter would be almost welcome at this point. For the first time in years, he is lonely. And it is the first rule of homelessness that you cannot feel loneliness or else you would never be able to handle the life of a wanderer.

Eventually he's going to have to get up and do something, because his stomach has begun to growl, but the gnawing pains of hunger are not enough to get him to move right now. It's almost a game – waiting to see how long he can handle sitting there, pushing off reality.

Footsteps approach. "James."

He recognizes the voice before he turns around. He sighs. "What are you doing here?" He can't be too annoyed, but he is suddenly very tired.

Thalia sits down on the bench next to him, and it's some kind of unpleasant déjà vu. "I thought you might need some company."

He snorts. "You're a Hunter. Isn't it some kind of crime to be hanging around a man all the time? And how are you doing this without Artemis throwing up some kind of fuss about how her lieutenant is gone?"

"I've got centuries and centuries. A couple of days is not going to make a big deal; I doubt the goddess has noticed my absence at all. And I am entitled to leave for short amounts of time as long as I leave my second-in-command in charge. The goddess herself only hunts with us perhaps once a decade. Time for us immortals does not run quite the same as it does for people like you." She pauses. "And besides, I wanted to say sorry for trying to make you come with me."

He sits back, not expecting the apology. "Why?"

"Because I know this is a jarring experience for you. You still don't believe me about who you are, do you?"

He doesn't answer, because he isn't sure. On the surface, the idea that he is someone else is absurd. But Thalia seems confident. And he is not.

Thalia looks down at her fingers. "I guess I was overeager. You know – Percy and Annabeth were my friends. I missed them. I thought maybe I could bring them back through you two." She falls silent.

Even though James does not know Thalia very well, he knows the feeling of missing his friends. At the worst of times, he misses Camp Half-Blood. So he wishes he could comfort her, but he feels like she wants the comfort of this Percy Jackson, and he is only James Fording, a poor substitute, so it would not be the same.

It's impossible, as they sink deep into their own regrets, for James to forget Liza. He can't believe that little girl from twenty years ago has become this lovely, accomplished woman. Although, she was always destined for something great. "I'm never going to see her again, am I?" he says out loud. "Liza, I mean. She thinks we're both insane."

Thalia blinks. "No, she doesn't. She's afraid of what she knows is not insane. You know"—she shifts uncomfortably—"I hadn't thought of this before, but it's possible that contacting her has made it worse for her."

"What do you mean?"

"A mortal girl with the Sight hanging around a son of Hermes and a Hunter doesn't quite make for a safe situation. It's rare, but sometimes monsters take note of these things."

James's spine stiffens and the blood freezes in his veins. "You mean she might run into a monster? But – but they can't hurt her, can they?"

"Monsters can hurt mortals. They usually don't try, but she's not just a regular mortal. So, yes."

He panics. He's not going to be the reason someone as successful with a future like Liza is going to get knocked off by a leering, clumsy monster. "Then, we have to help her, don't we? I don't even know where she lives. I don't know if she'll want to see us. What are we supposed to do? Thalia! You got her into this, you better help her get out."

She stands up. "Calm down, hobo boy. I know exactly where she is. She's at the Italian restaurant, Il Picco. It's her birthday. Come on. We can meet her there if we get going fast enough."

A cold wind howls through the streets, setting the swings swaying gently, creaking from the rusty chains. James follows her down the street. "You've been stalking her this whole time? That's – that's really creepy, Thalia."

"Creepy, but useful," she responds. Luckily, she knows where she's going, because James has never been to Il Picco, eaten there, or even heard of it for that matter. But then again, when was the last time he ate at something more high-end than McDonalds? Not in recent memory. They take the Metro to the swanky end of town, where everybody is dressed up for nighttime, and he feels a bit out of place. Liza will be mortified that he's shown up like this. He can't decide whether she'll be mad when he tells her that her life is in danger or glad that she's getting advance notice of that fact. Maybe she won't even believe him.

The lights are all lit up downtown. It feels intimate and friendly, like a small corner of a European city – not that James has ever been to Europe, but the way he imagines Europe being. There are quaint antique shops, coffee houses, and restaurants, all built with warm shades of brick, nothing synthetic or vinyl. Some of the restaurants have soft music playing out of their outdoor speakers. It's very romantic.

The romance of the place is broken by an ear-splitting shriek. James stops in his tracks. "What was that?"

Thalia points to an alley behind Il Picco. "There."

And they dive into the darkness, turn the corner, and in the secluded space, a woman stands with her back against the wall. Coming straight at her, a mermaid-looking thing. James let's out a yell. "What the hell is that?" The mermaid-thing turns its attention toward the newcomers. It makes eye contact, it's lower half swiveling around fluidly, and James realizes what it is – he hasn't seen one in a very long time. "Dracaena," he says. "Oh. Shit." In a split second, he stumbles upon a terrible discovery. In his haste, he forgot that he has since stopped carrying weapons of any kind since he moved out of camp. And monsters can only be killed with celestial bronze – a material that probably won't be found lying around some abandoned alley. He looks around desperately, but there's nothing. "Thalia!" he shouts. "Get her out of here. Take her around the corner! I'll deal with this." He doesn't know how yet, he just knows he has to get Liza out of there before she becomes monster-chow. Not her. Not now.

He'll improvise. It's what sons of Hermes do best.

Liza, against all logic, charges at the monster and – he watches in astonishment – she _kicks_ it with one of her high heels and sends it reeling before turning. "Jamie?"

"You're going to be fine," he tells her, just before Thalia grabs her hand, and the two of them run off. Now, it's only the dracaena and him, one on one. The snake-woman grins toothily. "A demigod here in D.C. with no weapon. That's one I haven't seen before."

"Well," he retorts, "I've been lucky enough not to run into a ton of uglies like you."

The dracaena hisses at the insult. "I'll be shoving those words back down your throat, godling," she snarls. She circles closer.

"Yeah?" He's really not doing himself any favors by pissing off a creature that could rip him in half, but he'll be damned if he lets a monster have the last word. "Let's see if you can get to my throat first, then we'll talk. I'm surprised an idiot like you even understood the insult to begin with."

Now, he's really done it. The dracaena roars and lunges toward him, arms outstretched, pale, spindly fingers reaching straight for his neck. His battle reflexes kick in gear, and his first instinct is to duck. He grabs the snake lower half of the dracaena. The idea was to push it forward and slam her into the wall behind her back, but the force of her forward motion is too much for him to overcome. They end up slamming into each other, and she rolls over his shoulder onto her back. Quick as a cat, he does a somersault and spins around. She's already on her feet – well, her snake tail. Her forked tongue slithers out. "Not bad for your bare hands. We'll see how long you last."

She darts around in fast jerks, so he can't see what her next move is going to be. She goes for his left side, but at the last second, feints and switches to the right. He anticipates it and throws his arm out for a punch. But the dracaena knows what she's doing. She clamps down on his fist with her ice-cold, clay-like hand. He catches a glimpse of the sharp points of her fangs gleaming in the light before they sink into his forearm. At first, it's just like two shots, but then the concentrated points explode in white-hot pain and his entire arm feels like it's on fire. Purely out of desperation, he swings out with his other arm and makes contact with the side of her head, which snaps sideways. She shrieks and lets go, darting to the opposite end of the alley and rubbing her neck. Her eyes scream murder. The pain in his arm dulls a little, but it's still worse than anything he's ever felt. Venom. She must have shot poison into his veins. Already, the wounds have turned slightly green.

The dracaena locks eyes with him. "We can keep at this for as long as you want, but only one of us is walking away. And we both know that without a weapon, that one of us is not going to be you." She cackles.

His arm hurts, and James is beyond pissed. "Wanna bet?" He rushes toward her with nothing in mind but getting this blight off the earth so he can stop trading verbal barbs with her. It catches her by surprise – she thought she would attack first – and before she can react, his arm is around her neck and he is squeezing, squeezing as hard as he can with the aim of draining out her life. She chokes and sputters, tries to say something, but nothing comes out. Her pointy fingernails are scratching at his arms, but he can't feel a thing, concentrating on tightening his grip. Her tail lashes around madly, but after half a minute, it begins to get sluggish and slow down. She is dying. He waits and waits until at last, she falls limp to the ground, disappears into dust.

He stands there, panting. "So, there is another way to kill you buggers." He glances down at his arms, which are scratched up and bleeding. He grimaces. "Not the best way, I guess."

In the distance, he hears the screech of cop cars coming into the district, probably alerted by Liza's screams. He doesn't need more warning and darts out of the alley. Around the corner, Thalia and Liza wait for him. "Come on," he says. "We don't want to get caught around here."

Liza seems a bit dazed. She's still wearing a short black dress – a pretty dress, but not prettier than the girl that's wearing it, James' mind helpfully supplies – and standing in heels. But she doesn't question as they lead her out of the area and to the main part of the city. Having nowhere better to go and preferring to go somewhere well lit, they sit on the front steps leading up to the Aerospace Museum. There, in the spotlights, and the taxis driving by, Liza puts her hand on James'. "Please," she says. "Give me an explanation."

He and Thalia exchange looks. "Are you sure?"

Liza takes a deep breath. "I just got ambushed by a woman with the lower half of a snake. Yes, I'm ready." She squeezes James' fingers. "Tell me everything."

..o..

So he starts from the beginning and tells her about the gods, about Camp Half-Blood, about him, and about the irregularities in some mortals being able to see past the Mist. He tells her about all kinds of Greek monsters and about how to defeat them. Last of all, he tells her about them, about the so-called reincarnations, and about memories that they do not know of, but Thalia insists are there. He only holds back some things, some things he is not quite ready to admit to himself, much less admit to her.

The fluorescent white of the spotlights seems to gather in pools in her gray eyes. He admires the determination in them. She doesn't look afraid, only grim and sure. She listens quietly, does not interrupt once, and the whole time she looks at him as if he holds the answers to everything. He wishes – for her sake – that he did. Thalia sits to one side silently, chewing gum.

After it is all done, Liza closes her eyes for a brief moment. "I believe you. And I'm coming with you."

Surprised, James brings his gaze from the starry heavens back to earth. "To where?"

"To wherever we need to go to get this sorted out. Jamie – I just ran away from my own birthday dinner. My co-workers are never going to speak to me again. I'm not sure I want to go back anyway. I hate politics. I kind of want to leave D.C. forever and start over somewhere new, where nobody knows Liza Allen or cares about Senator Allen. I'm just the freak who can see Greek monsters but can't do anything about them. What do you think? I have no choice." She gives him a small smile. "Besides, I trusted you back then, and I trust you now. I think you're good person. And I think we should resume our long-lost friendship."

It's such a simple thing to say, but James feels infinitely happier when he hears it.

..o..

Of course, in the scuffle, Liza's clutch got dropped somewhere in the middle of D.C., and there's no way they'll be able to find it. Luckily, she's got an extra key tucked under one of the leaves of the dying snake plant in her hallway, and she fits it into the keyhole of her apartment. The building didn't look very promising on the outside, and when she swings open the door, the inside doesn't do much redeeming.

James steps inside with Thalia behind him. "This isn't what I expected out of Senator Allen's people."

Liza stiffens. "That's because _I_ bought it, not Senator Allen. I'm not a freeloader," she says sharply.

"Okay, okay, I'm joking," he concedes with a grin. The inside is unbelievably organized. Like, to the point where James feels like he can get a toothache with how clean it is. She is probably – he thinks ruefully – the kind of person who color-codes her underwear and alphabetizes the bottles in her spice cabinet. The kind of girl he runs in the opposite direction from the second he realizes the type. These girls like _plans_, which is totally the antithesis of everything he has lived his life for. Plans are for squares. And James is the opposite of what is square. He is a lot of things – sometimes homeless, devilishly charming, a bit of a delinquent, good-hearted, a commitment-phobe – but he is not square.

He is thinking this as he examines the fact that she has coasters on her coffee table next to a book about Post-Impressionist art. He isn't sure exactly what this says about his little Tiana-girl Lizzy, but it sure says something about him that he can't name a single Post-Impressionist artist.

Liza puts her shoes back into the cabinet and rubs her heels. When James turns around, she is staring at him and they are alone; Thalia's in the bathroom. He feels awkward, sits down on one of the couches, and taps his fingers on his knees. "I like your apartment," he offers. It sounds hollow and like a hugely obvious space-filler. In his head, he slaps himself.

She sighs and collapses on the two-person loveseat. Somehow, she manages to do this without looking like a slob. Her ankles are primly crossed. "Contrary to what you might think, since I don't leech off my father, I don't actually make a lot of money. I'm not the Sidwell Friends rich girl I used to be."

"Who lived in a big white house with lots of windows," he helpfully supplies. He smiles.

"Yeah, that."

"Hey," he says, leaning in. "I don't think you're just an extension of your dad, okay? You seem to have a real problem with him, so I wouldn't link you two up because it looks like you might rip out my tonsils if I tried anyway."

She bristles. "I can't stand him. You don't understand."

"Trust me. I do." Between growing up thinking his dad was dead and then finding out his dad had just skippered off the day he found out his mom was pregnant _and then_ finding out his dad was actually a Greek god and having about forty half-siblings dumped on him in the same day – well, that would put a damper on any father-son relationship. The fact that James didn't knee Hermes in the crotch the first time they met was a testament to James' remarkable self-control at the age of twelve. Or, he liked to think so, anyway. "My dad's Hermes, remember?" he reminded her. "He's not about to win the Best Father of the Year award. So yeah, I get you."

Liza looked up from her hands. "I forgot. I guess you do have it worse, don't you?"

"See? We have a lot more in common than you think." He said it to cheer her up, but he couldn't help but think secretly he said it to make himself feel better too. Even in this tiny cubicle-like apartment, Liza has more class in a single dust-bunny under her coffee table than he has accumulated in his whole life. She shifts a little and turns toward him. Then, she smiles, which is probably the most brilliant thing he's ever seen; it makes her whole face light up. And he remembers that when he was little, he really would've taken a fist in the face _for her._ Because she was just that pretty, and the one girl he never would've believed had cooties.

The bathroom door opens, and Thalia comes out wiping her wet hands on her jeans. "So what'd I miss?" she asks as she shambles into the living room.

James shrugs. "Just catching up." He notices the glitter in Thalia's eyes and decides to ignore it. Not that he wouldn't give up a rib or two to be Liza's anything, but he's not going to let Thalia be his fifteen-year-old matchmaker; he's not that desperate.

Thalia sits next to Liza, on the side closer to James. The shoelaces on her left Converse is untied and muddied from running, and she doesn't see Liza eying her feet like a hawk, practically shouting through her pupils that Thalia needs to _take off her shoes right now_ before Liza tears them off herself. "Well, this is sufficiently awkward," Thalia says, running her fingers through her short black hair. Then, out of nowhere – "I hope you two are up for a quest." She tries to make it sound nonchalant, but there's really no way anyone can make a conversation bomb like that drop nonchalantly.

It takes him a moment, but James finally processes the statement in his head. "You – what? What do you mean, _quest_?"

"I mean, quest," Thalia says. "The kind that demigods go on. The kind of demigods that aren't always trying to run away from their heritage, that is," she adds pointedly.

"And what is that supposed to mean?" James glares. Gods, the girl can really be a pain in the ass sometimes.

"Nothing," she says innocently, but just guiltily enough to mean she loaded her words with meaning. She's goading him. He is so not going to take the bait. _He's not going to take the bait._ He's not that stupid. "What makes you think I want to go on this quest?"

"Because Chiron said you had to. I just got off I-M with him in the bathroom – "

"He I-M-ed you in the _bathroom?_ What, with the _toilet water?_"

"- and he says that he wants you to go on this one. He says you're the only one with enough experience to handle something this big. The demigods at camp wouldn't know the first thing about the underworld. None of them have been there before, and if I recall, you've taken a whirl around the place, haven't you? You know your way around. And knowing some of the younger ones, they'd piss off Hades in a millisecond and get vaporized."

James lets out something that's halfway between a choking cough and a snort. "Really. Did you also forget that if I get within half a mile of Persephone, she's going to pitch me halfway to Tartarus with her bare hands? Did you forget that part?"

"She's not there right now."

"_So what?_ Hades and I are not exactly BFF's at the moment either."

Thalia rolls her eyes in the most obvious way possible, and James represses the urge to kick her in the shins. He would prefer not to have a Hunter's arrow poking through his chest in the next five seconds. Also, she is about ten years younger than him, so maybe he should give her the benefit of the doubt.

Meanwhile, Liza's expression has morphed from roundly interested to mildly alarmed. "Are we – " she begins.

"Anyway," Thalia cuts in smoothly, "Chiron made it clear that you didn't have much of a choice in the matter. Not when it's something this big. You want to know what the quest is about?"

"No," he grumbles, "but it sounds like you're going to tell me anyway."

"The goddess Mnemosyne has disappeared," she announces. "And you know what that means."

"No, I don't know what that means. Nor do I want to know what that means." He refrains, with much effort, from putting his hands over his ears childishly, mainly because Liza is still watching.

She ignores him. "It means you have to find her."

"Why can't _Hades_ find her?" he whines. "Or Zeus? I mean, I'm sure Zeus has had an affair with her at some point; maybe she left so she wouldn't have to deal with him hitting on her all of the time."

Thalia kicks him in the shin, and James swears that before the week is out, he's going to have a horrible bruise there from her abuse. "_Don't_ throw around the Lord of the Sky's name like that. You know, if you have a death wish and want to be electrocuted, then go for it, but don't drag me into it. Also, I'm fairly sure Liza still wants to keep her apartment, so _behave._"

"I'm not going," he pronounces. "No way, no how. I'm done with that hero stuff." He sits back on the couch and crosses his arms.

Thalia doesn't take her eyes off of him. "I know why you don't like quests," she says, quietly, like she's testing the waters. There is a calm certainty in her voice; she isn't persuading him – she's telling him. "Chiron told me about it." She pauses. "Your first quest, eleven years ago."

Curious emotions flood his chest, but he is somehow detached from it all. Eleven years ago, he was fifteen, just a sophomore in high school. Even he'll admit, at that point, he was the cockiest son of a bitch that ever wandered the practice fields of Camp Half-Blood. He was on top of the world. He had just gotten his quest, and he was going to prove his status as The Coolest Guy At Camp. Everyone worshipped him. If he was going to be perfectly honest, he pretty much worshipped himself. And then, that summer, he went on his quest, and everything changed.

That fall, he dropped out of high school.

The fact that Thalia knows about it, the fact that she is bringing it up now, should piss him off to no end. But instead, he just feels a strange tiredness. Like he is too exhausted to care about what happened, and too exhausted to know how it changed the course of his life. Thalia is a manipulative little jerk sometimes, but even that can't make him mad. It was his fault, after all. It takes him forever to summon a response, and when it does, it sounds sad. "So what?"

"So," she says, "why are you going to let it define everything you do?"

He stands up. "I don't let it define _everything _I do_._ I choose not to go on another quest because the first one was a bust, okay? I've spent the last eleven years trying to get back on Persephone's good side. I'm obviously not meant to do this kind of thing. I'm not some great child of the Big Three; I'm just a freaking son of Hermes. Those come a dime a dozen, and this is _not my job._ I quit. I retire."

"Yeah, and that's all you've done your whole life. Why don't you want to make something of yourself, huh? Are you that afraid of failure? Stop being a loser, James," Thalia shoots back.

She sits straight and stares him straight in the eye, even though he's towering over her in rage, shaking and bright red. "Shut up, Thalia."

She scoffs and tosses her hair. "The guy I knew way back when wouldn't ever have given up that easily. And he had a dose of humbleness too. I sure wish he were here instead of you. You're nothing compared to him. Maybe you're right. Maybe you aren't Percy Jackson, after all. If you were, you would've taken up the quest in a heartbeat. If it hadn't been given to you, you would've broken the rules to complete it. My _friend_ Percy was a hero. You're nothing, James Fording. You're nothing, and I wish you weren't."

James stands there, swaying a little bit. For some reason, those words sting more than anything anyone has ever said to him. He feels hot and cold all at once. It's like not living up to Percy Jackson is becoming an insult. Why does he want to live up to Percy Jackson anyway? This is stupid. He is stupid for even thinking about this in such detail. The more he thinks about it, the more irritated he gets.

Is he really going to let some dead guy show him up? Even worse, is he going to let an old version of _himself_ show him up? It's almost absurd, how much it bothers him. The scathing way Thalia looked at him made him want to break something. He has dignity. He has talent. He isn't _nothing_, and how dare she think so? His decision teeters on a precipice. And then –

"Fine."

"What?"

He sits down on the couch again, breathing normally. "Fine. I'll do it."

She beams. "Really?"

"Yeah, really. But only to shut you up about this Percy Jackson stuff. I wish you'd stop bringing him up as a way of guilting me into things. It's pathetic."

"It works," she says with a grin.

On her other side, Liza, eyes wider than tea saucers, gives a little cough. James startles, almost having forgotten she was there. "You mean you two are going down into the underworld," she says.

They nod in unison, once, twice.

Her lips are pursed, serious, as if she is contemplating the idea of the underworld. "It's going to be dangerous. And you know, I don't know much about the gods, but I'm guessing they're probably not going to be very cooperative, seeing as you're – _not dead._"

They confirm this to be true.

"Okay," she says with a glimmer of a smile. "When do we start?"

James puts up his hands, palms away. "Wait, wait, wait. You don't think you're actually coming with us for this, do you? It's going to be all full of monsters and stuff, and you're – you're a mortal. You're not exactly monster-fighting material." Part of him is slightly embarrassed that she's heard all of this stuff about the failure of his first quest. The other part is just terrified that she'll get too deep in this stuff, and she won't be able to get back out. She has the Sight. And he doesn't want her to get hurt.

This time, she stands up. "It's okay, Jamie. I'm not six anymore; you don't have to protect me. And besides, you don't really have a say in this. I'm not staying behind after you've told me _all that._ Thalia, can I come?"

Thalia has a grin from ear to ear on her face. "Of course. Your Sight could come in handy at some point."

Liza clasps her hands in front of her. "Then, it's settled."

..o..

The first stop is to Camp Half-Blood (after a bumpy and uncomfortable Greyhound bus trip) where Liza finds, rather abruptly, that she can't actually go in, because she's a mortal. The funny thing is, it shouldn't matter, because she can see through the barrier and everything, and she can definitely see the hundred-eyed guardian of the border, who she correctly identifies as Argus. "Oh my gosh," she says childishly, "I read about you in my Greek myth book in fourth grade! I can't believe you're _real._" Oddly enough, he's sitting in the shade and reading _Pride and Prejudice_ with a dozen of his eyes. It's like running into the Easter Bunny smoking a cigar on the corner of Seventh and Jefferson.

He gives her a bored, exasperated look. Or at least, that's what she thinks it is, since he doesn't actually have a mouth to respond with.

Personally, she is impressed with how well she is taking this full submersion into the world of the Olympians. The lack of a mental breakdown both surprises and pleases her. Although, that still doesn't mean she wants to be left by herself on the outside of the barrier with Argus of the hundred eyes, lover of Jane Austen. But she's not about to ask someone to stay with her; she wants to prove to James, who is still skeptical, that she can handle this world of his. Of theirs (it's about time she's accepted that she is weirdly, inexplicably involved with it anyway).

Thalia volunteers to stay back with her without comment, and secretly, Liza is glad. They watch as James descends the green, grassy hill. Down there, campers are climbing on a rock wall with _– is that lava?_ – and shooting arrows at targets. She can make out campers sword fighting with probably real swords, and on the edges of her brain, she wonders if this Camp Half-Blood has some kind of liability insurance. It's like the place a little corner of fantasy tucked away from reality. It's like stepping into Narnia. She feels strange.

"This is where the demigods go, huh?" she says to break the silence.

Thalia leans against the pine tree, oblivious to the needles. "Yeah. This is where all of us nutcases end up."

Liza looks at the campers laughing and clapping each other on the backs, and it doesn't seem like they are the nutcases of the society. No, the nutcases of society are people like _her_. She knows everything, but she can't join in. She is a true outcast. "You know that book series, Harry Potter?" she asks Thalia on a whim.

"Of course. It might scare you to know that I was alive when that series was written."

In fact, it does scare her when Thalia puts it that way, but she plows on, determined not to think about the logistics of immortal aging. "Well, sometimes I feel like a Squib. I'm around freaking magical people all of the time, but I can't do any of it myself. It really sucks."

She sits down and pokes the invisible barrier with her toe. It doesn't budge. She sighs. Out of the corner of her eye, she notices Thalia watching her with a bemused smile. "What's so funny?"

"Nothing." Thalia sits down beside her. "It's just that most half-bloods would say they'd much rather be normal." They look at each other, and Liza realizes that she is spilling her regrets and insecurities to a fifteen-year-old. Or a three-hundred-something. Either way, it's a little unconventional. Thalia's bright blue eyes are wistful, as if she's remembering something from her past.

Liza thinks about how strange life's paths are. Did the gods mean for her and James to meet so many years ago? He crossed her mind many times, even though they were only childhood friends.

"I guess," Thalia says finally, "the grass is always greener on the other side."

"I guess," Liza agrees. After a moment of awkward silence, another thought crosses her mind. Ever since taking the job (which she has undoubtedly lost at this point, not having called in sick and not answering her cell phone), she hasn't ever had time to hang out with a real best friend, the kind she told everything to. And she misses it. So she blurts out, "Does this mean we're friends now?"

Thalia laughs. "We were always friends. You just didn't know it."

"Right," the other girl says, gazing across the sweep of land to the blue and green horizon, feeling unsettled. "Right."

..o..

It is mid-afternoon when James finally emerges from the other side of the border. Thalia has begun to make daisy-chains out of absolute boredom, and Liza has lapsed into a semi-coma as she watches the top of the pine tree sway back and forth to the rhythm of the wind.

Thalia stirs first, drops her flower-chain to the grass, and stands up. "What did he say?" she says without preamble.

For the first time since Liza has seen him, James looks tired, like he has heard things that he doesn't ever want to hear again. Or maybe it's just the past piling up on him. Sometimes, Liza gets that feeling too.

"Well, you're right," he says, but his voice is quiet. "Mnemosyne is gone. She lives in the underworld, but as far as we know, nobody there noticed her disappearance. Hades certainly doesn't care, although I can remember from my past forays that Hades doesn't care about a lot, so that shouldn't be a surprise. Apparently, it's the Muses who figured it out first. Who would've guessed? They're the daughters of Mnemosyne, and when they found out their mother was missing, they threw quite the racket on Olympus. They're the goddesses of the arts, and in typical goddess form, they're going to halt the progression of everything good in culture: music, historiography, literature, everything, unless someone returns their mother safe and sound. The gods are too busy for this kind of shenanigans, so it's us illegitimate children to the rescue! Again."

"The Muses?" Liza repeats. "There are nine of them, I remember. I always imagined them as dignified and grand ladies. Like opera singers, you know."

James smiles at her cheerfully, as he sheds his downcast expression. "Nope. I've met them before – they came to Camp Half-Blood once for a presentation. They're actually twelve-year-old gum-chewing, back-talking pre-teens, and yeah – really kind of obnoxious. They really liked opera back in the nineteenth century, so I heard, but in their own words, that is 'so five centuries ago,'" he says, making air-quotes.

"This sounds bad," Thalia hypothesizes. "I mean, if they halt the progression of the cultural development. Not to be glib about the goddesses of the arts or anything, but these are the girls who used to be huge fans of the Jonas Brothers and Miley Cyrus back in the day. Just think about how bad it could get if pop culture stayed _exactly_ where it is _forever._"

They all shudder at the sheer horror of it. "No books," Liza murmurs.

"No music," Thalia whispers.

"The end of Western civilization as we know it," James says jovially.

"Why do you sound so happy about it?" Thalia accuses, fixing upon him with her beady, blue eyes.

"Because," he replies, "I haven't even told you the best part yet. The Oracle – Machiko, the girl's name is – gave me a prophecy, and you know how those things are. They confuse the hell out of you and they always mean something bad is going to happen. Here's ours: _Between the living and the dead/A pathway lies to slumber's bed/Where memory wears a dreaming mask/And holds a choice to end the task._" He chews his cheek thoughtfully. "It must be really obnoxious to have to rhyme like that all the time."

"I assume you know what the prophecy means, then," Liza says. "You sound pretty confident."

He shrugs. "No idea. Hey, I got _coerced_ into doing this quest. I'm doing the bare minimum for it. Besides, it won't be so bad if the Muses halt Western culture. I'll just move somewhere else – Japan or something. No gods, no monsters, no annoying Quests. Wow, that sounds like a great thing, actually. I can't believe I hadn't thought of it before."

Thalia elbows him. "Yeah, okay, hotshot. You're not much help at all. I should've gone in myself."

A puffy gray cloud drifts over the yellow disk of the sun and a light breeze ruffles Liza's hair. An odd feeling slides through her. As Thalia and James bicker about what they should do next, Liza laces her fingers together and wonders how the pieces knitted themselves together in her head. Perhaps, there's something after all. Her connection with this world is tenuous, iridescent, but there are moments – like right now – when everything becomes clear. In the mortal world, few things are ever clear, but since coming to Camp, she has felt calm, like she has known this place a long time ago – but of course, she hasn't. She takes a deep breath. "I know where the prophecy means for us to go," she says.

The two of them stop arguing, and their eyes swivel toward hers in unison.

"Between the living and the dead," she clarifies. "A pathway lies to slumber's bed. That's Hypnos, the god of sleep. Sleeping is the in-between of being awake and being dead."

"That's an optimistic way to look at it," James deadpans.

"I mean – Mnemosyne must be in Hypnos' cave, although it seems like a peculiar place to disappear to. She must be asleep and lost track of time." Technically, it's a feasible thing to do for a goddess since time runs differently, but it seems like a rather stupid mistake, especially if it causes her daughters to go beserk and throw worldwide temper tantrums.

James exchanges a look with Thalia and throws his hands up. "That's just perfect. I thought this was some earth-shattering kidnapping job, but actually, we're just being called to be Mnemosyne's living, breathing alarm clocks?" He tilts his head back and yells at the heavens, "This is a real funny sense of humor you guys have got, you know that?"

"How did you know that?" Thalia says, oblivious to his temper tantrum. "You _are_ a mortal and not some unclaimed or forgotten daughter of a minor god, right?"

"Completely mortal. You forget, when I was little and seeing all kinds of strange Greek phenomenon – getting sent to a psychotherapist for it, no less – I had a dorky fascination with Greek myths, so I'm probably more versed in them than most people. I got a minor in classical studies when I was in college. Senator Allen wasn't thrilled about paying for it, either, and it was the one thing that I was happy about him paying for." She turns to see James grinning at her widely. "What?"

"Nothing, nothing. It's just – never mind."

She flushes to her ears. "Okay, you can't do that."

He turns away nonchalantly and starts twirling Thalia's forgotten, half-completed daisy chain. "Classical studies, huh? That's absolutely something I imagine someone like you getting a minor in. Classical studies. Is that even a department in university?"

"Yes!" she says heatedly. "And it's very popular, I'll have you know!"

"Correct me if I'm wrong, but you went to Georgetown, didn't you? Only posh, rich kids like you get some kind of degree in classical studies." He's really laughing now and making no effort to hide it.

It takes a great deal of effort to keep from stomping her feet, but Liza has had a lot of practice dealing with her parents. Still, between dealing with government workers and her landlady constantly bringing up her golden pedigree, she is starting to get sick of it. She mutters something under her breath that sounds suspiciously like "pompous ass," but not loud enough for it to be an insult. This is James, after all, and through all of the good memories, she's forgotten that yeah, even the nicest of boys can still be douchebags when they're in second grade and sometimes, they don't really outgrow the habit. So calmly, she says, "I know it's only because you're jealous that I'm so cultured and a graduate of Georgetown, that I'm not slapping you across the face right now." Because after all, she _is_ proud of her alma mater.

"Ouch!" James has an expression of mock hurt. "You wouldn't slap me. I saved your Tiana lunchbox. So much for gratitude, huh."

Liza rolls her eyes. "Let's go, lunchbox boy, before you really say something to offend me."

..o..

Luckily for them, James is a son of Hermes, and as such, he is allowed to traverse between the underworld and the land of the living without too much difficulty – Hermes being the psychopomp who delivers guides the souls to the underworld. This is, he guesses, why he was given that stupid quest eleven years ago to begin with. As far as powers go, this one is kind of redundant, because it's something children of Hades can do too, and they can do it with a lot more pizzazz. Generally, they're also a tad bit more welcome when they show up without housewarming presents at the Palace of Hades. So really, James just gets kind of the crappy end of the stick. He tells them about his power anyway.

"How convenient," Liza says, staring at the hole in front of them, like she can't quite believe it leads to the underworld. To be perfectly honest, James can't quite believe it either, but reality always sets in when he takes the steps down and winds up right on the edge of the smelly, polluted river Styx, which has in the years, become more of a sludge pond than a river – there's no "flowing" to speak of.

"Oh, yes," he replies with sharp sarcasm. "Look, I didn't ask for this either; it's not like I enjoy being able to crash dead people parties."

Thalia clucks her tongue and says blandly, "I bet you wish you had those water powers now, huh? Definitely a higher cool-factor."

And the thought of entering the underworld is nauseating enough without getting teased by a fifteen-year-old who is really a three-hundred-year-old ancient Greek equivalent of a nun. "Shut up, Thalia."

She shrugs and nonchalantly slings her bow over her shoulder. Carelessly, she pulls a celestial bronze dagger out from her quiver and tosses it at Liza, who catches it with astonishment. James sees this exchange and purses his lips. "Oh, _no._ You're not giving her randomly sharp objects like that. She has no clue how to use it. You forget, she hasn't ever been to Camp. Gods, I thought after so many years, you'd grow some responsibility, seriously." He strides over to take it from Liza, but she's already unsheathed it and is inspecting the sharp edges with a careful, questioning index fingers. "Don't cut yourself!"

She looks up, as if she has just noticed him there. "I can handle it."

He stares at her, flabbergasted. "Are you _high_?"

Her eyes sharpen up immediately. "No, you idiot, I said I can handle it. I know how to use a _dagger_, thank you very much. I know you're going to make fun of me again, but my parents paid for self-defense classes through high school. We learned all kinds of techniques. We did hand-to-hand combat too, but for some reason, I liked knives better." She smiles at him thinly, and he isn't sure what to make of that.

So instead, he says, "I'm going to pretend like that statement didn't make you sound like a sociopath." A pause. "_You know how to knife-fight?_"

"Not girly enough for you?"

"No." He struggles to find what he's trying to say, which is something along the lines of, _um, awesome girls knife-fighting is never a problem_, but realizes right before it comes out of his mouth that it would probably sound like something a thirteen-year-old pubescent boy would say. "That's a little unexpected, I'll admit. But I bet you've never gone up in a knife-fight against a monster. It's kind of different."

She tilts her head to one side. "Yeah, I guess. I won't feel as bad gutting it."

"You are a sick, sick person."

Something like a snort – very un-ladylike – comes out of her mouth. "You've done this since you were _twelve_, and you're judging me? At least I haven't personally killed anything. Who should really be doing the judging here?" she asks skeptically, and to his dismay, James realizes she's right. It's not a pleasant realization. It's not the same thing, after all, killing monsters and killing people, and he hasn't ever killed a person. Knocked a few out, that's true; maybe broken some bones, but no killing.

"Well, that's why I stopped trying to be a hero," he says finally, like it's something he's discovered at last after all these years of avoiding going into the real world and making a name for himself. It's not all it's cracked up to be, demigods and everything. Some people are made for it and some people aren't. He doesn't know about what his past life brain thought about it – Percy Jackson was apparently some kind of crazy, ass-kicking, invincible son of a bitch, if what Thalia says is true – but James just doesn't _feel_ that inside him. It's not like there's some secret seed of greatness that is lodged deep inside his ribs, and it's not like he hasn't tried searching for it. He doesn't think it's there. And he can't decide whether or not he is disappointed about that or not.

It's Thalia that breaks the silence. "Are we just going to stand here and watch the snake burrow get wider and wider? By the way, this is a really shitty way of entering the underworld. I'd almost prefer going in through the L.A. entrance if it weren't all the way across the country." She elbows him, not too hard. "Come on."

The hole is now wide enough for a person to step through, and the tug in his gut slows and stops. "There," he says. It looks – slimy – inside. The three of them stand in a line facing the entrance, a strange trio. He's in the middle with Thalia, a full head shorter than him, on his left, and Liza with her hair tied up in a high ponytail on his right. "I feel like we need to link arms or something and walk in together like the Wizard of Oz."

Liza laughs. "This doesn't look as cheerful as the yellow brick road." It's true. Nobody in the world would be able to stand before this cavernous, yawning hole, with the stench of warm, moist earth and worms and maybe something else (dead people?) without raising a few goose bumps.

He turns to her, half-serious, half-joking. "I hope you're not afraid of the dark."

"I got over that when I was ten." She smiles, but it never quite reaches her eyes. Still, there isn't an ounce of uncertainty in her voice, so he can't decide whether or not she's telling the truth.

Either way, it doesn't matter now. Shoulder to shoulder, they step inside, and the darkness swallows them up, closes behind them and leaves them entombed.

**Author's note:** This part has actually been done for about two months now, but I was planning on just finishing up the fic in one section. Seeing as that would be about 23,000 words, that doesn't seem like such a great idea now. I have officially rewritten the ending four times, and now I'm finally working on an ending that I like. There was a point when I cut out about 7,000 words; I have a "deleted scenes" section that is practically long enough to be its own fic.

Thanks for your patience and your marvelous reviews. Look for Part Three (3) any time in the near future, as I don't believe I will be rewriting the ending for the fifth time.


	6. Part Three, 3rd

**Author's note:** The conclusion to Part Three. For you.

Three

by

Icy Roses

**Part Three (3)**

The underworld is just what she expected in some areas, and absolutely not in others. For instance, it's dark and gloomy and looks exactly like the place where deceased people would go. Stalactites drip from the ceiling precariously, dripping cold drops of mineral cave water like an unfortunate roof leak. The path is paved with jet-black stones, which is better than nothing because the path itself is edged with moist brown dirt that looks like it could house a variety of long, many-legged insects. Privately, Liza thinks that this is the best incentive _ever_ to stay healthy, because she wants to delay her trip down here for as long as possible – assuming, of course, that they make it out and she doesn't die down here. Her stomach does a bit of a turn.

But when the tunnel finally widens to the main portal of the underworld, her fingers flutter to shield her eyes, and she can't help but gasp. She blinks against the glare of fluorescent bar lighting hung in long, endless lines from the ceiling, illuminating everything in its harsh, unforgiving glow. It sucks the glow out of the brightest complexion. Under the bluish-white light, James is washed out, pale as a corpse, and the hollows under his eyes stand out more. The lighting strips away secrets and lays him bare. And Liza's mind wanders to – something about him, unsettling, strangely known, like she had seen him like this before – before she wonders just what _she _might look like under this light, which makes her embarrassed. "So this is the underworld?" she quips, lowering her hand from her brow. "It's, uh, charmingly lifeless; no pun intended. Reminds me of a Wal-Mart."

And to be sure, it does resemble a Wal-Mart, right down to the endless lines filing through, and the garish bright yellow smile on a billboard on the left side that says, _Save time; E-Z Death line to the right!_ "What happened to the gloom and doom underworld of mythology I remember?" she asks, surveying the landscape.

James runs a hand through his hair. "They had to remodel sometime. The world's population is always growing, you know, which means longer lines, more congestion, and a crabbier Hades. So Daedalus – he's the architect who designs all of the stuff down here – decided to modernize it. Make it less antiquated. See there?" He points at the River Styx, which is, to her surprise, down below. It sits in a valley; "sits" being the proper word because if she didn't know better, she'd think it was frozen. It doesn't flow at all. "Pollution," James tells her. "Now, Charon doesn't have to operate a river ferry. They have the Sky Train, and he's the conductor who takes tickets."

"The Sky Train," she repeats.

"Yeah. High-speed railway that travels over the river and loads ten times as many souls than the old ferry did. Plus, it's way faster and more energy efficient." He grins.

They walk to the edge of the cliff and peer down at the carved valley below where the River Styx is but a shallower, paler memory of itself. Liza pulls her toes back, just slightly. "I wasn't aware that Greek mythology updated itself every couple hundred years."

"With everything you've seen so far," Thalia says, "are you really surprised?"

Liza shakes her head slowly. "No matter how many times I think I won't be surprised – I will still be surprised. I think I'm going to wake up every morning for the rest of my life wondering if this is some kind of LSD-induced nightmare."

The Sky Train zooms back from the other side of the crevice, sleek silver and clattering against the track.

"Do we need to take the train across?" Liza asks, suddenly struck with apprehension at the idea of meeting Charon. Charon! He was the guy who in all the Greek myths was portrayed as a skeletal figure shrouded in a black cowl that didn't completely conceal his skull-like face. But now, he's apparently the conductor of a high-tech, subterranean train. Liza imagines an archaic, pole-wielding guardian of the River Styx clipping holes in tickets and directing people to their seats. She giggles.

"What's so funny?" Thalia says.

"Oh, nothing." Her amusement diminishes in an instant like a helium balloon pricked by a needle. It's just her nervousness manifesting itself in macabre humor. Not funny at all. Pretty sad actually. She shifts on her toes and notices a faint blue glow along the path. It starts at her feet and swerves to the right, meandering along the stony path until it's lost beyond a turn. She almost imagines an arrow pointing her way along the glow. Straining forward slightly, she follows it with her eyes, squinting. "D'you see that?"

"See what?" James and Thalia say together.

"The path. It glows." Liza gestures at the ground. It's pale, but it's there.

Blankly, the other two shake their heads.

Hesitantly, as if she is testing the path with her toes, she takes a few steps along the marked glowing line. "I think," she says, half-turning, "that we are supposed to follow it."

"Um," Thalia says.

"I know it sounds ridiculous," Liza replies quickly, "but I just have this _feeling_, you know?" She tries her best not to rush her words, but she is a little freaked out herself. After all, she had thought that she was pretty normal as far as people a part of the Olympian world could be, but now she's seeing things that even the demigods can't see, so it's reached the point where she surpasses even them at weirdness. This is not good. Still, she's almost positive that –

"It's the Sight," James interrupts. "She can see the path." He sweeps his gaze over to her. "Can't you?"

Liza feels self-conscious. "Um." She would hardly call seeing a faint blue line in the ground as "the Sight," unless this "Sight" everyone keeps talking about is a very unimpressive thing. Besides, she's not even sure if she's right or not, so to go ahead and proclaim, _yes, in fact, I know exactly where we're going_, is the slightest bit pretentious.

But James can't hear her internal monologue, and it's probably all for the best. "Like Ariadne. She could See, and she was mortal just like Liza."

The train whistles back toward the other side of the underworld, and Thalia is watching, but it seems like her vision is turned inward at something neither of them can see. "Like Rachel," she says. Or so Liza thinks, because it's said so quietly that she's afraid she may have only heard it in her head. In a moment, Thalia snaps out of her deep, silent thoughts – out of the past, perhaps, Liza wonders – and says, "Yes, you're right, of course. Let's go."

With the purpose of a practiced schoolteacher, Thalia marches in the direction Liza faces and only pauses to throw back a "Are you coming or not?"

James and Liza exchange looks. He shrugs, and they follow fast on her heels.

It doesn't take long to reach their destination. The faint blue light never falters in its glow, leading them straight and true to the base of an underground mountain, only the side of which could be seen. The peak stretches through the ceiling and crests in the land above. Liza wonders where they are relative to the map. Have they traveled to the Appalachians already? It doesn't seem possible, but James assures her that time and space are different in the underworld.

The tunnel, when they reach it, stops them in their tracks. "Are you kidding me?" Liza says inanely. "Are you joking?" She feels the insane urge to laugh, which seems to grab her at the most inappropriate of times when she is in the underworld. Roughly, she suppresses it.

The questions aren't directed at anyone in particular but more at the fluorescent-lighted tunnel, which presumably leads to Hypnos' lair. Except, this isn't a normal tunnel.

"At least we don't have to walk?" James offers, with the same kind of deadpan optimism one uses when looking on the bright side of being shot in the leg.

The floor of the tunnel is a four-meter wide conveyor belt, moving inward at a meandering pace of three miles per hour. There's no conveyer belt heading outward, and everyone can catch the drift of what that means. Thalia takes a step forward, but Liza stops her. "Wait. This looks like it's inviting us in. That's kind of suspicious, isn't it? Who would make it so easy for us to get there? It's even lighted." She peers inside, and it's straight and endless. "This has to be a trap."

"Of course it is," Thalia says. "You learn eventually that everything is a trap. You just kind of walk in and hope you can figure it out before you actually get trapped." For a few seconds, Liza thinks she is being sarcastic, but then realizes she's not.

"No plans? That seems pretty irresponsible." She tries not to sound horribly appalled but isn't very successful.

James chuckles and unsheathes his sword. "I invented irresponsible."

Eyes rolled toward the ceiling, Liza shakes her head. "How are you people still _alive_, seriously?"

"A whole lot of dumb shit luck," he tells her. "So are you feeling lucky today?" He flashes her a feral grin.

She scowls at him heavily enough to let him know quite roundly that she doesn't appreciate his nonchalant attitude, before lifting her chin and brushing past both of them to step onto the conveyor belt, which rumbles and creaks briefly as if unused to human weight. The movement under her feet makes her balance sway for a split second. "We'll see if your luck holds up."

..o..

The conveyor belt carries them into the cave. The hanging fluorescent lights on the ceiling are badly battered, as if everyone in the world has forgotten about them. They dangle on the low ceiling, low enough that if James weren't careful, he would bump his head on one of them. If Liza stood on her tiptoes, she would too.

He is just beginning to think that, _yes, she's right_, this is far too easy. Where are the monsters? In the eerie quiet, he can almost imagine the gods watching from high above, waiting with bated breath. The gods, always watching. He feels a flash of annoyance. He wonders what they're waiting for now, if they're waiting –

And then, the lights go dark and plunges everything into the darkest black. Somewhere, in the back parts of his mind that are just starting to flicker on and catch wind of the situation, a voice is murmuring, _wow, this is not good, not good at all. Can someone turn on the lights, please?_ He realizes he's holding his bare sword in one hand, when he hears Thalia scream, "Put it away! You're going to accidentally stab one of us in the dark!" Her disembodied voice wakes him up, and he hastily replaces the sword back in its scabbard – not without some difficulty.

"Where are you?" he calls out blindly. This is absolute darkness, he remembers dimly, from some silly cave exhibition he went on when he was young and his mother still took him on occasional vacations. The tour guide told them all to stay on the path as she flipped a switch and all of the lights in the cave went dark. _This,_ the tour guide said with the feigned interest of one who is remarking on the merits of moldy cheese, _is absolute darkness. It means there is the lack of any light. No light leaks into this cave. So it doesn't matter how long you stand here, your eyes will never adjust. Stick your hand in front of your face. You won't even be able to see the outlines._ And she was right. It was a strange feeling, standing in impenetrable darkness, so black, it was almost like swimming through inky soup, like the darkness had a consistency.

That's how it feels now, like he had gone back to being a five-year-old who wasn't quite sure what the noise coming out of his closet was. Out of nowhere, a hand grabs his. He coughs, finding his voice again. "I'm going to assume that was you, Lizzy," he says aloud to the blackness before him. "And not a monster with really nice, soft hands."

Next to him, she huffs and her hand squirms a little. "Of course it's me."

"I'm here too," Thalia says.

"I heard you earlier," James replies.

"I know. I just wanted to remind you, since you're obviously more concerned with Liza's safety than mine."

He blushes, feeling grateful that no one can see it. "You're a big girl. You can take care of yourself, Hunter," he retorts. "Now, can we please think of how we can turn the lights back on so we're not fighting blind? You know, some monster could appear right now and stick its hand through our stomachs, and we wouldn't even know until our livers were gone and stopped processing whatever it is livers process."

Heavy breathing from all sides. The good thing is, James thinks, that it doesn't seem like there is going to be a monster attack after all – or if there is, that monster is horribly late or asleep or possibly just as bad as seeing in the dark as they are. He realizes his hands are sweaty, which is slightly mortifying, but he doesn't pull away. He doesn't think he could anyway, because Liza's hanging on so tightly that it's hampering his blood circulation. _Think,_ he tells himself.

But in the end, of course, it is Liza who comes up with anything rational at all. "It's because we're in the realm of Nyx, isn't it? She is Hypnos' mother, so wherever he is, there is a little bit of her too. In the world of the goddess of the night, everything is dark. Except…" She falls silent for a few moments, and they wait patiently for what she might come up with next.

"Except what?" Thalia asks, brash and impatient.

"Hmm, I wonder," she says. "Take out an arrow, Thalia."

"Why –"

"Just do it!"

Thalia grumbles but does as she is told. She fumbles around with her quiver and pulls out an arrow. "Nobody move," she warns. "I don't want to take out an eye by accident." Then, as if by magic, the arrow flickers like a broken light bulb, before settling into a steady silver glow. Thalia brings it up to her face, where it illuminates the crevices of her young face, makes her eyes look dark blue.

"Bingo," Liza says. "I figured that since we were in the cave of Night, the only thing that shines is the moon. And Thalia is a Hunter, so she must have some moon properties." They huddle around the light of the single arrow like a bonfire. It's only enough to show the circle of their faces, swift glances shifting to one another. Below them, the conveyor belt moves on inexorably to their destination. James looks around, half expecting to see neon red exit signs pointing the other way, but even Hypnos and Nyx aren't ironic as all that.

It's Thalia that ends up voicing the obvious. "I guess we wait from here." Pause. "This is the worst quest ever."

"Maybe that's the point," Liza suggests. "Maybe the waiting is supposed to drive us crazy, so they won't even need any monsters. Maybe Hypnos will find us at the end of the tunnel absolutely bonkers, and he'll just have a good laugh and let us go."

In the darkness, Thalia gives the other girl a blank look. She turns to James. "For a non-demigod, she's got the 'thinking positive' part pretty much down, you think?"

..o..

There's no such luck for them. It's not long before a monster comes traipsing along, fighting the forward flow of the conveyor belt to get at them. It would be a piece of cake, except (as they find) the occurring theme of the monsters in the tunnel of Nyx is that they are not like the normal ones they face. For one, these monsters are all blind. They don't even have eyes, which is the part that is probably the scariest to Liza. They're just a face with huge nostrils and a gaping mouth. Their arms are rippling muscles and their legs are like tree trunks, so running away is not an option. Besides, there aren't any directions to run in.

Secondly, these monsters, probably deduced from the cavernous nostrils, have an amazing sense of smell. There isn't anything in a mile radius that they wouldn't be able to pinpoint with their noses. James and Thalia and her are not even remotely that far away.

The monster is so wide that his girth practically stretches from side to side of the belt, so there isn't any way to dodge it either. It's like a walking wall.

"Get behind me!" James yells at her. He catches the monster first, but he's not prepared enough, and it ends up slapping him five feet backwards.

Thalia shoots one of her arrows, but it's like pricking a buffalo with a needle – the thing probably doesn't even feel it. It screeches at her, all pissy-like, and then proceeds in hounding toward her, hands outstretched. All of a sudden, Liza finds the monster almost directly in front of her so she does the only thing she can think of. She stabs it in the foot and rolls between its legs to the other side, prays to the gods that she'll make it out clean. The monster narrowly misses stepping on her, and Liza manages to keep her brain from short-circuiting.

The monster howls, hopping on one foot, and there's not much left to do as James and Thalia finish it off. They stand there, sweating and panting, the noises echoing strangely in the tunnel. "That wasn't too bad, Lizzy," he says when he's caught his breath. "I thought for a second that he'd crush you with his foot for sure."

"Aren't you glad I gave her that dagger?" Thalia reminds him. "You need to have a little faith in people."

Liza shrugs. "I'm just glad I'm not dead." She replaces the dagger in the sheath and tries to get her ears to stop ringing with the roar of the disintegrated creature.

..o..

It's hard to mark how much time has passed in the darkness. Nobody is wearing a watch, and it doesn't matter anyway. But knowing the time probably would help them keep saner; yes, it's the wondering that's the hard part. Have they been there for a day or a week? Liza knows, at least, that his circadian rhythms have been severely hampered by the lack of daylight. She feels tired all the time, and she doesn't doubt the other two feel the same way.

The thick, heavy silence makes her contemplative. Something about the inevitability of the destination being on a single-track conveyor belt makes her think about…well, where's she's going to be if they ever get out of this thing alive. She's always been a planner. She's the kind of girl that drives men away because when she gets nervous, she gets into her hyper-planning mode and starts charting out her life years in advance and cleaning like a maniac. She has long known and accepted this facet of her personality.

She steals a glance at the two people with her – an almost-sixteen-but-really-three-hundred-year-old-servant-of-Artemis and the boy who she met on the playground defending her lunchbox way back when. They are the last people she ever imagined being with her for the most spontaneous thing she's ever done. Where she should be is at work. She doesn't need to have her pager on her person to know that she's no doubt missed at least fifty emails and twenty voicemails from work. There might be one from her mother or father telling her to stop ignoring their calls and show up to a public function once in a while. There might even be one from Bea, telling her she's pissed off that Liza disappeared on her own birthday dinner. Il Picco seems like it was a hundred years ago, back in a life that she's not sure she's interested in leading anymore. Which is funny, because just a few days ago, she would've told anyone who asked that she was perfectly happy with where she was in life, that she was making a statement, that she was going to get far _without_ the Allen family.

Thank you very much.

How can so much change in just a few days? The very thought of returning to her tiny cubicle in the Department of Education gives her that claustrophobic feeling – this is, assuming, of course, that her lack of contact with the outside world hasn't already gotten her sacked. Maybe that wouldn't be such a bad thing. Maybe she would be able to start over.

In New York City, she thinks, with a measure of surprise. That would be somewhere to go. It is the city of opportunity, where people go when they don't know what they want to do.

It scares her, this feeling of not knowing what she wants to do. Ever since she was born, she knew what she wanted to do. Most people could not say this without some admitting that they were exaggerating but truly, Liza can't remember a time in her life when she felt lost like this. She grew up reading and writing. When she was six years old, she ran away from home for the first time. Admittedly, it was poorly thought out – she was six years old, after all – but she knew from that time forward that her family was stifling her. She wasn't interested in politics, wasn't interested in social spheres or making good impressions. She was anti-everything the Allen family had spent years establishing as a political dynasty.

She knew she wanted to make a difference in her life. She almost majored in social work in college, but her father's threats to immediately disinherit her and cut her off from the family made her reconsider. She loved her family, even if she disliked them very much. The job at the Department of Education was supposed to be her chance to climb up the ladder on her own. The interviewer had leaned in and said eagerly, "Liza Allen. Does this mean you're the daughter of Senator Allen?"

And she had gone into a nearly five-minute panicked oratory about how she didn't want her family connections to have any bearing on the hiring process until the interviewer, red and embarrassed, said he promised that it wouldn't and even sent her an apologetic card once they hired her, saying that she was very qualified and he was sorry for upsetting her.

And now, here she is in this impossible tunnel to a goddess' lair, her former, accomplished life waiting for her back in D.C. She isn't the kind of person who can just push it off until later to decide what to do with that. But part of the reason she's so wound up on it might be because she is unsure about a lot of things, and she thinks, _maybe if I can just figure out this one career problem, I can figure out the rest of what I am so afraid of._

That is the question. What is she so afraid of?

So James turns to her with a crooked smile and says, "Ready to back out yet? The world of Greek mythology is a pretty freaky place."

It's not _that_ that scares her. And she doesn't know how to answer anyway. She just takes his hand and hopes in the dark.

..o..

Five minutes into the tunnel, James had started feeling heavily guilty for bringing Liza into this whole mess. This is his world, his world that he's tried for so long to escape, and now, he's bringing a mortal into it, just because she can tell them where to go. Don't they have some kind of mythological GPS for this?

Five minutes after the first monster attacks, he's so guilty, he's thinking about telling Thalia to take Liza out of the tunnel. How? He doesn't know. He just knows that if she gets hurt, it will be his fault. Nothing and no one will ever make him forget what happened when he was fifteen. That time, he was alone. It ruined his life. Chiron will tell him time and time again that it was good for him, a learning experience, and he shouldn't beat himself up over it, but Chiron has seen heroes _die._ That James made it out a little battered but alive probably seemed like a huge success. Besides, he's pretty sure Chiron is obligated to sound encouraging and wise at all times.

This time, he's got people with him. Thalia knows what she got herself into. Liza? Not so much. He admires her optimism, but he's afraid for her. If she gets hurt then he will –

He doesn't even want to think about it. It's like he's afraid it will happen if it even crosses his mind. At the same time, he's ashamed to admit it, but he doesn't exactly know how to tell her to go home. And not because he's afraid it will hurt her pride, but he's afraid to say goodbye. He forgot how much he liked her. The woman sitting across from him looks like the very image of a professional career-type, even though there's a smudge on her cheek and her hair is flying in four hundred directions (something, he knows as a man never ever to tell a woman). She looks smart and accomplished. She looks like she knows where she's going in life and what she's doing. She looks like she wouldn't be out of place on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange or at a high-end law firm.

Women like that didn't fight monsters or hang out with troubled guys like him. Women like that married men who were also professional career-type people and sent their children to expensive college prep schools in New York City. They had friends who bought Louboutin shoes and went to Europe for vacations. They didn't believe in Greek gods, much less go on quests. They certainly couldn't dispatch monsters with knives.

The point is, _the point is_, it all leads to one devastating conclusion. He likes Liza Allen. Like likes. He snorts. He's making it sound like a fourth-grade crush, but that other word is a bit too strong. He likes Liza in the way that, if they weren't headed toward potential doom, he might ask her out on a date. You know, if he could get back into the swing of dating. The last girl he dated was a daughter of Demeter, Janelle, and after the quest, he stopped talking to her. She got mad and dumped him. That was pretty much it. The other girls at Camp started thinking of him as That Emo Kid. When he became a counselor, he had a couple of flings – nothing he would consider dating, per se. He doesn't want to just have a fling with Liza, though. He wants to actually be with her. She is – what is the word he's thinking of – _cool._ And he likes her.

The problem is, he's still thinking of the reincarnation thing. That is so weird. So Liza is supposed to be Annabeth Chase, his soul mate or something. Does he like Liza because he's legitimately attracted to her, or is his dormant soul doing some freaky reconnecting thing with hers? He still doesn't have any memories of his past life, even though Thalia spends the spare time recounting stories that mean nothing to either Liza or him.

He doesn't know what to think. All he knows is there are a million reasons why this might be a nice fantasy in a dark hole in the ground, it would never work in real life. Firstly, Liza is a mortal. He has tried the whole mortal thing before, and it always ends badly. His favorite (and by favorite, he means, most mortifying) conclusion was when a party of centaurs crashed into the girl's living room while they were – ahem – occupied. The Mist made her think it was a group of drunk plumbers, but not even the Mist could hide the gigantic hole in her wall and how the "drunk plumbers" knew him by name.

Secondly, Liza has a life. Who knows, she might even have a boyfriend.

Thirdly, just because some ancient fated love said that they would end up together again, doesn't make it so. In a past life, he was the hero of the world. Today, he is James Fording, a wanderer and a son of Hermes who lives by his wits. Shit happens.

There isn't any conceivable way this would work out.

She slips her hand into his. He could pretend, though. For a little while.

..o..

The end comes almost sooner than they expect, and with a lot less pomp and circumstance. "Hey," says a voice, brassy and loud and hurting her ears. Liza wakes up, not remembering when she fell asleep, and finds Thalia's toe lodged in her side.

"Sorry," she murmurs groggily. "When did I fall asleep?"

"I dunno," she replies, "Doesn't matter. We're here."

Liza bolts upright. The tunnel has lit up, light from the doorway, and the conveyor belt is very quickly coming to an end.

James swears. "So we are. All right, everybody. Stay together. This could be a trap. This could be a false alarm. Whatever. As long as it gets out of this gods-forsaken cave." He stands up, and the rest of them follow suit, squinting against the piercing light and what lies beyond the doorway. He holds a hand up to his eyes and attempts to see past it, but it's like a liquid wall of brightness.

The belt is getting shorter and shorter. Liza braces herself between James and Thalia and grits her teeth.

There's that brief moment of panic as they approach the doorway, and then – they're through.

Liza takes a breath so deep it hurts her lungs and blinks profusely until tears wet her eyelashes. They seem to be in the middle of a – no way. She looks around again. "Are you serious?" she asks. She glances at Thalia and James, waiting for an answer to her question, but they don't seem inclined to answer. Maybe because they are in disbelief too.

They are standing in the reception area of a grand lobby. A hotel lobby. Above them, a crystal chandelier sways softly, the pinpricks of light flickering around on the carpeted floor as if someone had just disturbed the glittery hanging monstrosity. In the middle of the room sits a burbling fountain decorated with carved marble dancing cherubs, the bottom coated with a healthy layer of golden coins, as if tossed by wealthy patrons making wishes.

Except – "Umm," she pronounces with a degree of surprise. There are no wealthy patrons in the middle of the underworld, and she's also fairly sure there's no one who would need a hotel room here either. "Umm," she presses, which means, _someone please tell me what the hell is going on?_

"Uh, I think this is a hotel," James says. "Actually."

Liza notices a man hutched over a grand piano in the corner, plunking out a gentle melody. "Right. A hotel. That makes sense," she hears herself say faintly. Because that's what supposed to be at the end of a miles-long conveyor belt in pitch darkness, right? A hotel. Clearly.

"Yes." For the first time, she sees a lady behind the reception desk – for a split second, Liza wonders if she only just appeared – dressed in an extravagant chiffon ball gown. When she sweeps out from behind counter, the train trails behind her. She looks like a Victorian era debutante. Liza doesn't need a demigod to tell her this woman is a goddess. She could be a monster, but Liza thinks she's far too beautiful and far too comfortable with herself to be a monster.

The goddess stops right in front of them. Her goblet-sized curls, a shade darker than Liza's butter yellow hair, is twisted in a French chignon, but half of it falls down her back like a waterfall of antique gold all the way to her impossibly thin waist. She is so slim and perfect, she looks like a real-life sketch of a Disney princess. Maybe Aurora from Sleeping Beauty. "Welcome," she says. Her eyes are amber. She smells like jasmine. She speaks with a heavy Georgian drawl. It's like she stepped straight out from the pages of a history textbook, except she's prettier than anyone looked back then.

In short, she is the opposite of what Liza expects out of a goddess. But really, at this point, shouldn't she have learned not to be surprised?

"Who are you?" Thalia demands. She has that belligerent stance, the way she braces her legs when she expects to have a face-off.

The goddess' rustling gown settles around her in folds. She purses her lips. "I might ask the same, little girl. You are barging into _my _hotel, after all. Except, I do know who you are, Thalia Grace. And you two, James Fording and Liza Allen. I know all of you. I have been watching you."

Liza shivers, but Thalia just looks outraged at the insult of her using "little girl" and her full name so close to each other. "You didn't answer my question, and I asked first."

"I am Mnemosyne." She sounds bored, and her tone puts into words what she doesn't need to say aloud – _obviously!_ As if she is annoyed that they don't immediately recognize her for who she is. Well, Liza thinks, shaking herself out of the shock, it's not like anyone gave them picture identification like _hey, this is who you're looking for, just by the way, so you're not running around like chickens with your heads cut off_, which is in essence, what they'd been doing. It worked out rather well, though. Here is Mnemosyne, unharmed and ready to go.

But there are so many questions, way too many questions. Like, why are we in a hotel? Or where have you been? The one that ends up being asked is, "Why are you dressed like _that_?" because to tell the truth, Liza had been expecting some rendition of a toga, and she certainly hadn't expected the warm Georgian slur of her words.

James shoots her a look that says, _why are you questioning her fashion sense when she has the ability to send us all up in flames?_

"_Because_," she says, "I like the simplicity of older days. When people were friendlier and liked to reminisce. Now, it's all go-go-go, and people barely sit down to collect their memories anymore. They have photographs and videos and technology to record memories for them, but there's nothing as sweet as a memory locked deep in your head. I haven't had anything to do for ages. And this is why I like to run this hotel. A hotel is where people come and go. The checking point between adventures. I like the in-between. So here I am. I dolled up Hypnos' cave for my own little place. He didn't seem to mind."

"So this hotel is…" James ventures.

"—This hotel is where lost souls come on occasion when they tire of wandering along the shores of the Styx. Or the ones who are unwilling to cross into the underworld. Denial. It's a powerful motivation. Some people are simply not ready to be dead. They come to this hotel and the pool can help them unload whatever it is makes it difficult for them to let go. The rooms are for them. Of course, many of them come simply for the sleep. Hypnos offers the best sleep anyone can give. And dead people are very, very tired."

"…Right," he says. "And the reason why no one knows where you are?"

"I usually stay near Hades' palace, but the Sky Train gives me headaches with all of its rumble and clattering. It's so loud there. It completely ruins the ambiance of what I do." She makes dramatic hand motions to accompany her speech, as if clattering and ungainly modern architecture will be the death of her. "So I relocated, and Hypnos was only so glad to oblige. He likes it here too." She turns her head ever so slightly and smiles at the piano man in the corner.

"And you didn't _tell_ anybody?"

"Nobody asked. Nobody ever asks where I go. I'm just one of those minor goddesses, show up on Olympus twice a year to do our solstice meetings and then I come back here."

Liza finds this outrageous. Unbelievable, even. "Your daughters are threatening to halt the progression of culture!" she shouts. "You didn't tell them either?"

It might be her imagination, but Mnemosyne's eyes flash from molten gold to black for a second, but they return to normal. "It can be tiring, you know, to be the mother of nine teenage daughters. You wouldn't know a thing about that, Liza Allen; don't look at me with that horrified expression. I just needed a break from them. I wasn't going to let anything happen. But I just needed some peace and quiet. When I don't want to be found, I'm not found. Hades wasn't all that concerned. It's not my fault the whole of Olympus went into some kind of hullabaloo over this."

"Yes, yes it is your fault." Liza stamps her foot. "You brought us all the way down here, but you were fine the whole time. You could've, I dunno, sent a message or something. You're a goddess. Aren't goddesses supposed to be responsible over mortals and earth and other important stuff like that?" She is mad. She is so mad. How dare she, standing there smugly in her lavender chiffon gown and smile her sharp condescending smile! She sent all of them on a wild goose chase!

"Y'all wouldn't know the first thing about being a goddess." She crosses her arms and bumps up her ample cleavage.

"Well, Lizzy's right," James says, standing next to her, and his arm brushes hers. "The Muses are acting like a bunch of spoiled kids, and that's your fault, at least, don't you think? Also, we could've died. But you know, no big deal. We're just expendable mortals, right?"

Mnemosyne looks thoroughly unamused at this time. "Enough. I did not expect such insolence. I am not here to be lectured." She glances over at the piano man, who has stopped playing and turned around on the bench. "And besides, we have done enough talking. I think y'all should know that rules are rules. There's nothing for it. People come here to sleep." Her fingers twine together. "I can't have angry, loud mortals coming here and imposing their ridiculous notions on this place. It's time for you to go to sleep. Hypnos?"

The piano man – Hypnos, Liza realizes, startled – stands up and strides toward them. He's wearing a slick double-tailed tuxedo, and he has sleepy hazel eyes and twitchy fingers.

Thalia nocks an arrow, but Liza blacks out before she gets a chance to see if Thalia released the shot. In her last moments of consciousness, she expects to hit the ground with a thud, but the thud never comes.

..o..

In front of her is a two-faced man. Kind of like Two-Face from the Batman reruns on TV when she was young, except this guy is almost seven feet tall and he literally has two faces, not just two halves of one face. They're standing at a train station that is empty with the exception of the two of them. It's the kind of cloudy day that appears bright white, the kind of day she hates, because it can't decide whether to be gloomy or sunny.

Liza can't remember coming here, and she doesn't know why she's here. In fact, it seems like she has been here for…forever. Like she has always been here and like she will never leave. This is a dream, she thinks, quite clearly. She checks to make sure she can see her feet, because the defining factor of most dreams is that she can't see her feet; it's too hazy. But no, her feet are there. She's wearing tennis shoes. She can't remember the last time she wore tennis shoes; maybe in high school P.E. This is when she notices that she's wearing an orange Camp Half-Blood t-shirt and jean shorts. Still…

She looks the strange man straight in the face (er, faces) and says, "This is a dream, isn't it?"

He shrugs, which is the strangest of gestures, because the shoulders bump at his two chins. "I don't know, is it?" One of the faces looks pleased and the other one looks disgruntled and keeps checking its watch, like he can't believe he has to DVR his favorite show to talk with _her._

"Who are you?" She asks the obvious question, because she's the kind of person that can't come to any conclusions unless she's gathered enough facts. She stays calm. There aren't enough facts to warrant panic. Yet.

The voices speak in eerie unison. "I am Janus, god of doorways, beginnings, endings, and choices. I am here, especially to see you."

"Me?"

"Well, you don't see anyone else around here, do you?" the left face says insultingly. "And everyone said she was a _smart_ one. Maybe intelligence doesn't stay through reincarnation."

The right face tuts. "Maybe she's not the right one, after all."

"Oh, come on. Have you looked at her? Spitting image, spitting image. Besides, I remember her being a bit dim-witted when we visited her that very first time. Except that time, she was with the Jackson brat, and he kept interrupting. And then Hera, of course. Everyone is so _nosy_. Thank goodness we caught her by herself this time. No distractions. No influences. She can make the decision all by herself."

Liza frowns. They're talking about her, but she can't make any sense of it. "What decision?" she says, too loudly. Her voice echoes in the empty station. She notices, for the first time, a red train stopped beside them on the tracks. The windows are big and clear, and she can see the seats all on the inside, lined up in rows.

Janus ignores her question. The face on the left eases into a Cheshire-cat smile, so sharp, that she can almost imagine needle-sharp teeth peeking past the lips. "Memories, Rosie. Which ones do you remember?"

"My name's not Rosie."

"Oh," the right face sighs. "Of course it's not. Stop being an idiot," it tells the left face. "Her name is Liza now."

"Liza is an ugly name," the left face says. "It doesn't suit her pretty face. Rose was my favorite. Flower names are timeless. The original name, at least, was interesting. Not one you saw on the street every day. Divine mothers are more creative."

Liza grows tired of this banter. "Stop speaking in riddles. What do you mean by all of this?"

"Slow down, Annabeth," the left face teases. "We can't tell you anything. You have to figure it out by yourself. You'll just have to decide whether you want to or not. Your choice. Your curse, after all. Three lives, almost over. We are reaching an end."

"Or a beginning," the right face puts in hopefully.

"Or a beginning," the left one agrees. "But that's all up to you. Mnemosyne is up to her old tricks again. The human mind is a fascinating thing to play with. Janus knows. Sometimes, even the minor gods can enjoy their jobs." He (the left face) looks at her. He has a blue eye and a green one.

Annabeth, Annabeth, says a woman's voice in her head, singsong. Liza's head is spinning in circles until she is too dizzy even to formulate one clear thought. She cups her hands up to her mouth and puffs out a white cloud of water vapor. "Tell me, Janus. What am I supposed to choose?"

The left face, the more talkative one, hoots and slaps his thigh. "It is not our job to tell you what is the right choice. It is your indecision that delights us. Makes us brim to the edge with delight. We are here to offer you the choice. If you make the right choice, then good for you. If you make the wrong one, then, better for us. But in the end, the choice is yours, to do with what you please." Little crinkles of laughter gather in the corners of his eyes. "What a hollow shell of oneself when memories are gone. Perhaps the choice for Elysium wasn't the right one to begin with. You were always too self-confident. Percy Jackson is a funny boy to have picked you."

Liza's head throbs horribly. She rubs her temples. Aloud, she says, "This is no dream. A nightmare, definitely." She glares at them, as if with the sheer willpower of her eyes she can make them give her the answers. Who is Percy Jackson? And why has he picked her? Why doesn't she know who he is?

The worst part is, she feels awful for not knowing who he is, because the name seeps into her veins and into her very blood, as if it is an intrinsic part of her. But she doesn't know who it is. She knows that Percy Jackson is important, but _why?_ And why can't she remember him? She remembers the other name Janus mentioned, Annabeth. _Annabeth-Annabeth_, the woman's voice calls out insistently, making her headache worse. When she repeats it in her head, it's as if the names make a certain kind of convoluted sense – Annabeth-and-Percy, fitting together somehow like two parts of a whole.

Janus turns to leave, and she knows the minute he goes, the train station will disappear and the dream will be over. Before he can disappear, she shouts, "How am I supposed to know the right choice?"

The left face blows a raspberry, but the right face looks pensive. The latter slowly lifts its gaze, lips flat. "Easy advice," he says. There is a pause. "Follow your heart."

And then, she wakes up.

..o..

Wow, she has a horrible headache, the kind you get when you are fully aware the night before that you are going to have a dreadful hangover in the morning and then you decide to oversleep on top of it. She feels like her brain is pushing right up against her skull and pulsing and – _ow._ She blinks and realizes that she's lying down on one of the couches in the lobby of a five-star hotel; where is – _oh right._ It wasn't a nightmare. She is here. In the background, the soft piano music plays on.

She turns her to look for the direction of the music, where Hypnos is. There is a horrible crick in her neck. And she notices for the first time that she is chained to the couch. _What is going on?_ The couches are arranged in a circle with a coffee table of lacquered warm blond wood in the middle. Images of carved satyrs and maenads dance around the edges, so lifelike, they might as well actually be moving. James and Thalia are chained to separate couches. Both of them seem to be sleeping, and she's too afraid to try and wake them up in case Hypnos hears them and sends them back into a dreaming stupor. Mnemosyne, the bitch herself, is nowhere to be seen.

But then James slowly opens his eyes. He can't put a finger to his lips, but he just barely shakes his head, to say, _please, don't say a word._ She nods. _What are you going to do?_ she mouths silently. He doesn't move, which she takes to mean, _to hell if I know._

The chains are of some golden-bronze material, not the shiny silver metallic links she expected. They are surprisingly light. She shakes her wrists a little to see how tight they're bound, and unexpectedly, her hands go right through the links. She almost yelps in surprise, but she swallows the sound right before it escapes her lips. Celestial bronze, she thinks, the truth dawning on her. They had this conversation before in the tunnel. Celestial bronze is harmless to mortals, and lucky for them, Hypnos and Mnemosyne forgot she was a mortal, traveling with demigods as she was. She breathes in deep, tries to chase the headache and her jitters away with oxygen.

Behind James, Hypnos plays the piano, his fingers flying over the keys. His back curves with the melody and straightens with the beat. He is utterly absorbed in the music. Even so, Liza doesn't think she'll get away with undoing noisy metal chains. But what can she do? Her eyes fall upon the quiver full of arrows and the slender bow resting at the feet of Thalia's couch, all perfect and waiting for her to pick them up. She's never handled a bow and arrow before, but there's no time like the present to learn. Especially if there's a god playing the piano and threatening to send you into slumber like sleeping beauty for the next hundred years. Yep, no time like the present.

Carefully – thank goodness the floor of the hotel is carpeted – she skirts around the edge of the coffee table and pulls a tip-heavy arrow out of the quiver by its tufted back end. The bow, constructed of smooth mahogany, is heavier than she expects when she picks it up. Thalia imperceptibly nods her approval. Liza isn't sure about this. The one time she can remember ever using a bow was in archery class freshman year of high school. She missed the target, ended up almost nailing the teacher, and was pretty much advised to never sign up for archery has her elective again. There went her goals to be this graceful, self-possessed archer. It wasn't in her. It probably wasn't going to be in her now, and that sucked, because she had one chance to get this right.

Impossible things, she thinks. _Many impossible things have happened._ She raises the bow, nocks the arrow, and pulls it straight back to her eye. She swallows. _Just need one more impossible thing._ Her hands quiver. She sends a prayer to Artemis and wonders if goddesses even hear mortal prayers. _One more impossible thing_. She counts down to herself. Three. Two –

"What are you doing?" Mnemosyne shrieks, running into the room.

One. Liza lets the arrow fly. Out of the corner of her eye, Mnemosyne shoots her own brand of magic out at the path of the arrow, but it is too fast, or it is protected by something moonlit and magical. Thalia doesn't have normal arrows. Time is slow, and Liza can see everything happening frame by frame. Hypnos stops playing and swivels his head, but it's too late.

_Thump. _

Almost absurdly, the arrow sticks out of Hypnos' back like a poorly positioned needle on a pincushion. He stares at it for a moment, and then disappears, leaving the room oddly quiet without the piano music.

"Hurry!" Thalia yells. "There isn't time!" She's right. Liza's mind goes clear and blank. She rushes to James and unwinds the chains, fingers fumbling madly. The chains clink to the ground, and he draws his sword.

Mnemosyne has shaken herself out of her angry stupor. "You wouldn't attack a lady, James." She lifts her chin.

"Yeah? Watch me." He charges toward her.

She sidesteps daintily, but the tip of his sword catches one of her balloon sleeves. It rips. Mnemosyne lets out a furious scream. "I'm a _goddess_! How dare you!"

"Keep saying that," James suggests, "and see how far it gets you. It's not like I can kill you anyway. It's fighting without the guilt! Perfect."

She puts on a scandalized expression. "You're despicable. I'm not staying around for this. Y'all going to regret coming down here and messing up my beautiful hotel. Forcing me to go back to the noisy upper world, I won't forgive you for that. I won't." She snaps her fingers and disappears in a shower of gold, right as one of Thalia's arrows passes through the spot where she stood.

Thalia slings her bow over her shoulder and inclines her head at Liza. "Pretty good shot. Messy form, but you hit the target."

There's an awkward pause. "Thanks," Liza says. "Does this mean everything is going to be normal now? Mnemosyne is back where she is supposed to be. We can go back to the real world, yes?"

Thalia picks through the couches and coffee table, other random décor in the room – like a Ming porcelain vase and a potted palm tree – and stops at the fountain, where the bubbling water replaces the piano music with its sleepy quality. "Maybe. Come look at this."

Liza and James exchange looks and follow her. The water shimmers with an iridescent quality, like it has a fine layer of oil skimming the surface. The colors reflect flash-quick images, and Liza thinks she sees something, but it might just be a trick of the light. The marble cherubs look menacing instead of cheerful up close.

"This," says Thalia, "is the pool of Mnemosyne."

"Okay." James nods. "If this is Mnemosyne's, it means we should probably get as far away as we possibly can. Right. I can do that."

"No!" Thalia says. "I mean, this is the pool of Mnemosyne, the pool of _memory_. This is the water spirits drink when they want to retain their memories in the afterlife. It's only people who are granted Elysium or Isles of the Blessed who get to do it, usually, because they're the only ones who would have any benefit in remembering the past life. But it works on everybody. It retrieves memories – all of your memories. This is why we came here. I get it now." She looks up at them, her blue eyes fierce and sharp.

In that moment, Liza realizes what she means. Helplessly, she glances at James. Their eyes meet, and suddenly, she finds, she doesn't want everything to go back to normal. Not normal-normal anyway. There is so much to say. The air is heavy with meaning, but Thalia is waiting, and the pressure gathers until Liza is too tired to pick out what is important and what needs to be said.

"Don't you see?" Thalia presses. She shakes a finger at the water. "This. This is why we came all the way down here. It's fate. This is supposed to happen. You are supposed to drink the water, and then, you'll be Percy and Annabeth again, just like it should be. Just like I told you it would be." She smiles beatifically. The silence in the air slowly remolds her smile into a frown. "What? Why are you standing there like that?"

After a few beats, Liza sits down next to her. "It's not all that simple, Thalia."

"What do you mean?" she demands.

"Don't you think this is kind of a big decision?"

Thalia crosses her arms. "Okay," she says skeptically. "This is not one of those things you can 'sit on' for a couple of days and come to a conclusion then. This is right here, right now. You are either going to do it or you're not. I don't see what the big problem is. You are who you are. Nothing you do is going to change that. Whether you know it or not, there are memories inside, and you can either choose to replace them or ignore them."

She thinks of the mysterious, hazy dream that she only has snapshots from now. Janus visited her, she remembers. Is this the decision? Is this the choice she is supposed to make? She can't make this choice, this choice that would change her future, reorient her place in this world. She just looks at James.

"Well?" he says in that nonchalant way, but she can tell his thoughts are thick as hers. "What do you want to do? It's here." He gestures at the pool.

Yes, she thinks sadly. Why does it have to be here? Just once in her life, she wonders what would happen if she took a chance and did the thing that wasn't logical. Fifty years from now, will she regret making the decision she did? Will she regret not having the courage to choose the road less taken? She wishes she wasn't the kind of person who had to weigh all of the consequences. But she is. She can't change her core-self. She never wanted to until now. She never felt so useless. But again, there isn't anything she can do about that, either.

Once, she asked herself in the tunnel what she was afraid of. She thinks she knows. She is afraid of what will happen if she does not control it. Everything could unravel.

"You aren't really thinking about this, are you?" she says finally, but it comes out all wrong. She can see the hurt that flashes across his face in a split second, before he wipes it off with the trained skill of one who is used to shoving his feelings under the rug. _That's not what I meant,_ she thinks, but she doesn't say it out loud. It's too late.

"Liza," Thalia starts.

"—I just can't do this," she blurts out.

James shifts on his feet. Almost too quiet to hear, "You don't have to do it alone, you know."

Their eyes meet. _Just tell me_, she thinks. _Please._ But how can she ask something of him that she is too afraid to say?

Softly, he says, "We could, if you wanted."

She wishes she could believe. "I know." The cherubs wink at her, tilted eyebrows that seem to move. "I can't be someone I'm not."

"Then let's be exactly who we are," he says. "You and me."

And he is looking at her with those green eyes and slack cheeks that tell her he is hoping she will say yes, and she thinks she might break his heart if she says no. Because she thinks he might like her, might even love her, but she can't let him do that.

She cannot drink the water. She cannot force herself to be this Annabeth, if she's not right now. And she can't let him love her just because there's some forgotten memory inside him telling him that he should love her. She can't force him to do anything. The water is a trick. Fifty years in the future, she doesn't want to wonder if he loves her just because the stupid water told him to.

"I want to go home," she says.

He swallows. "Okay." With his two hands, he draws a shape in the air. The hotel rumbles and a hole emerges midair for her to step through. The portal hangs there, waiting for her to say goodbye.

She considers saying sorry, but then again, it wouldn't mean anything after the crushing rejection she just dealt. So maybe it's better not to say anything at all.

One foot in the hole.

"Hey," James says, grabbing her wrist. He searches her face for something he might've missed, and she feels ashamed. "Don't be afraid. Be brave."

"I am being brave," she says and pulls away.

..o..

Summers in New York City are surprisingly muggy and humid, even though it's hundreds of miles more northerly than Washington D.C. So that's one thing that reminds Liza of home. She's been in the Big Apple for three months now, but there are still days when she wakes up in the wee hours of the morning wondering why she's in an unfamiliar apartment for a few seconds before reality catches up with her sleep-deprived brain.

"Go home, honey. It's almost six-thirty. The memos can wait." Carrie says. Her eyes crinkle up in the corners sympathetically. "You're such a hard worker."

Yes, it's good that some things are still familiar. No matter where she goes, Liza will always be a workaholic. But things are a bit different. She's working as a secretary for an accountancy firm in New York. It's not the most thrilling work in the world – gods know, the paperwork is dreadful, but it pays sufficiently well enough to pay her rent. Rent in NYC will have her soul, she thinks as she shuffles away her papers.

She likes to stay long hours because the work gives her something to do, something to keep her busy. Going home to an empty apartment and turning on Lifetime is only a sign of to what degree her life has degenerated. Sitting in front of the TV and eating butter pecan ice cream out of the carton, it's hard to believe that three months ago, she was traipsing about in the underworld. In her utterly unremarkable life, it's easy to think the whole thing was a dream.

But there are small reminders. Like how she sees monsters with increasing frequency now that she's closer to Camp Half-Blood. They mostly ignore her, but she carries a celestial bronze knife on her anyway. Once, she ran across an eleven-year-old son of Apollo. She drove him to the borders of Camp and watched him cross. When she drove home that night, she took a bunch of sleeping pills and slept for eighteen straight hours. It wasn't safe, but there was too much on her mind to stay awake and sort through it all. She doesn't like to sort through things much these days. She isn't one for regret.

She's reminded every time she opens the door, walks down the street. This is New York City, not D.C. Her parents don't live fifteen minutes away. Bea and her will never be friends again, not after she showed up at the office four days without leave and quit on the spot without an explanation. Bea was furious. It didn't matter at the time, but sometimes, Liza feels bad about it. They were kind of friends, after all.

The thing that does matter, always matters, is how she lives here alone, and every moment of every day, she knows it's her fault. There's no way she can apologize for what she did. They probably don't want to hear it anyway, Thalia and James. There are times, on impulse, when she'll be seized by a crazy desire to drive back to D.C. and scour every street for James, maybe return to the old playground where against all hope – she believes he'll be waiting for her with a half-smile, watching the children swing. But that's ridiculous, of course. He probably doesn't want to see her. She didn't give him any reason to want to see her.

And it all loops back again to being her fault. She tries hard not to feel guilty about it. She has a new life now; she likes it. Being in New York has given her the distance and the kind of new outlook on everything that she's wanted. If nothing else, meeting James again and Thalia gave her that.

"Hey, Liza," a voice says.

She turns around, smiles a little blankly. "Hello, Rob. Something the matter?"

Rob is slightly sallow, but most of the accountants at the firm are a bit sallow because – well, come on, they're accountants. He was the guy who conducted her orientation when she was hired. He's been exceptionally nice and helpful. Probably a couple of years older than her. Normal, middle-class New Yorker. He sidles up to her awkwardly. "You need a hand?"

"Need a hand putting away my papers?" She laughs. "No thanks, Rob. I'm a big girl. I think I can wrangle the horrors of my file cabinet."

He grins and relaxes. "Yeah, sorry, I guess you can, huh? Well, actually, I came over here because I was wondering…"

"Mm hmm?" Most likely, he has some new project or some late report he needs to review or send to the boss, and he feels bad giving it to her at this point.

"Umm, I was wondering if you were free this weekend, actually."

"Oh." She looks up. This is unexpected. Rob blushes. If she paid enough attention to her surroundings, she might've noticed him hanging around her desk a lot recently, probably plucking up the courage to ask her out. Well, she's done enough rejecting for a while. She can't think of a good enough reason to say no, and she's obviously not going to be busy this weekend. "I think I am."

"How does dinner sound?" he says eagerly.

She smiles. He's nice. A nice, normal, mortal guy. And she hasn't dated for so long. "That sounds fantastic. Pick me up at seven? I promise I'll look nicer than I do for work."

"Great. I'll see you then." He looks thrilled.

Liza is…Liza is feeling okay. She feels considerably better by the time she packs up her stuff, turns off her lamp, and heads for the door. The office is empty, and tonight, she is not dreading going back to her apartment. Maybe she'll have fun on this date. This is good for her, getting back to dating. She can't live in regret all of the time. She is moving forward, the way James would tell her to do.

She is being brave.

..o..

Summer in D.C. sucks. It's not like he hasn't lived them before, but at this point, the heat is really just pissing him off. He wants to just hang out like he used to around the streets at dusk when the humidity would die down and a breeze would pick up. But because he's trying his hand at this whole "responsibility" thing, he's taking classes at the community college during the day and working the night shift for museum security. The good part about this is he has an apartment to call his own for the first time in his life. The bad part is he rarely gets to use it because he's busy all of the time. He sleeps about four hours in the morning after his shift at the museum and before his first class. He naps between the other classes and does homework at dinner. His dyslexia is just as bad as he remembered it being in high school, but he's learning ways to work through it with a counselor.

Ah, at least the museum has air conditioning. He swings around a flashlight loosely, tosses it in the air, and catches it again.

It really sucks that the only museum that had an opening was the Aerospace Museum. Every time he comes to work, he has to walk up those same steps that he and Liza and Thalia sat on when they first ran into that dracaena. It seems like forever ago. But those goddamn steps. He hates walking up them. He hates seeing them from inside the glass. They make him think of Liza, and she's gone for good, so that's the least productive thing ever.

It's not like he didn't try to find her. He returned to D.C. and went back to the Department of Education, waited for her to come out of that door with her blond hair tied up, carrying a leather suitcase. She never came. He went inside to ask about her, and they told him she quit and moved out of the city, although she didn't tell them where. And that was it. She had done a damn good job of getting away and covering her tracks. He was so stupid. He _is_ so stupid for still thinking about it now.

It seems like such a horrible trick of fate that he ran into his childhood friend twenty years later only to lose her because he is a demigod. Demigods just can't be happy. It's like against the rules of Greek mythology for demigods to be happy.

Thalia left after the quest was over. She said she would help him find Liza, although he isn't even sure he wants to find her. She obviously doesn't want him to find her – she made that abundantly clear when she picked up and moved away just to avoid him. It hurts his pride a bit, but that's not the worst thing. The worst thing is how she completely dumped him but he still can't get over her. He can't bear it. He will take the long way around, risk being in the sweltering heat for an extra twenty minutes, just to avoid the neighborhood around Il Picco. But avoiding it means he is aware of it, that he is thinking of it, and avoiding it means it stands out all the more prominently in his mind. It's like a catch-22.

On nights like these, when it's sticky and hot and quiet outside, when the traffic doesn't seem to be as bad as it usually is, and the college students haven't hit the town yet, his mind swims with thoughts of Liza. Sometimes, he even thinks of the way her hair was always in tight, high pigtails that made her look younger than she was as a child. He wonders when her parents finally let her do her hair by herself in the morning. By that time, she had stopped coming to the park and he had felt curiously hollow inside from her absence, as hollow as a nine-year-old boy could be. But he had forgotten about her quickly then. It isn't so easy now.

He yawns and tosses the flashlight again. Something swoops by with a sharp twang and knocks it out of the air. It lands with a clatter and rolls across the floor.

A girl with windblown black hair picks it up.

James swallows his surprise and groans. "Aw, dammit, Thalia. You broke my one good flashlight. Did you have to shoot it? What was the poor thing doing to you?"

..o..

Liza dresses up for the first time since that night at Il Picco. She still has that little black dress, but she figures she won't be wearing it ever again. Even so, she can't bring herself to throw it out, so it hangs in her closet. For the date, she decides to go with a knee-length silvery gray number, a single necklace to dress it up, and a pair of silver stilettos.

She has that goosebumpy feel, the nervousness that almost verges on illness in the fifteen minutes before Rob shows up. She turns on her curling iron to fix a curl only to turn it off thirty seconds later before the iron has completely heated up. She spends five minutes trying to decide what perfume to wear. She is suddenly seized by the realization that he is going to see her living room, which is not nearly as clean enough as it should be, so she dusts and polishes everything for the fortieth time. She dials his cell ten minutes before to tell him she feels too sick to go on a date tonight, might they reschedule? But she hangs up the phone in a panic after the first ring, chickening out. Of course, now he's going to think she's a total spaz if he gets that missed call – does a missed call show up if she hangs up before it rings all of the way through?

There are all of these all-important things to think about until – oh, the doorbell. Her nausea clears up. She opens the door, and Rob is standing there with a bouquet of lilies. "Thank you," she says. "These are beautiful." And they are. In a nervous frenzy, she can't remember where she's put any of the vases, so she ends up sticking it in a large blue glass and putting it on the coffee table by the door.

"You're quite beautiful yourself," he tells her and she blushes. "Are you ready to go?"

In a nice shirt and khakis and his dusty blond hair controlled by hair gel, he looks much more put together than he does at the office. He looks perfectly opposite of James, who has never used hair gel, but whose hair falls in a charming, messy kind of sense on his head – _stop that._ "Definitely," she says firmly. "Where are we going?"

"I hope you like Greek cuisine," he says.

This strikes her as almost laughably ironic. "I do, in fact. Love it."

He appears heartened by this, but he needn't have worried. Liza is a food connoisseur; she'll eat practically anything as long as it's put on a plate in front of her. "There's this lovely place just around the corner from our office. It's kind of out of the way, so you probably haven't noticed it before. It's a beautiful night outside. D'you want to walk?"

She says she would love to, and they head out.

On the way, he asks her about where she came from. She doesn't tell him much about her family but the rest of it, she sticks pretty close to the truth. "Why'd you decide to move to New York?" he asks her innocently as he opens the door to the restaurant.

"It seemed like a good place to start with a clean slate," she says. To erase the memories, she doesn't say.

Dinner is delicious. They have an appetizer of fresh feta cheese and olives, a famous Greek soup called _fasolada_, artichokes cooked in olive oil, and the main course is this lovely lamb all roasted with tomatoes and orzo. "The perfect kind of meal for a girl with an appetite," she tells him, taking a bite of lamb. "Impressive choice for a first date."

"Didn't want to screw that up," he agrees with a laugh. He leans toward her from across the table. She notices for the first time that he has warm eyes, blue as the summer bay. They are probably his best feature. "You know, I'm glad you moved here. The office was dreadfully boring without you. Accountants are not known for having the most exciting stories to tell at the water cooler."

_Oh, you have no idea_, she thinks. _The stories I could tell you. Would you even believe me?_ Of course, these are stories she can't tell anybody. Locked in a world of mortals, she feels like she's stuck in a glass box again. But on the surface, she smiles. "You think so? I'm sure accountants have the most wonderful adventures, if you would only stop to listen."

"Yes," he says. "Why, just the other day, I spent two hours wrangling a particularly difficult Sudoku puzzle. I almost broke a sweat. But I didn't always want to be an accountant."

"Really?" She puts down her fork and wipes her lips with a napkin. "What did you want to be then?"

"I wanted to be an archeologist. I wanted to travel the world and have all kinds of adventures. I specifically liked ancient cultures. It seemed like a cool thing to be able to go on archeological digs and discover the past. You know? But it wasn't a very practical thing to do. So I took my parents' advice and majored in accounting instead. Granted, I live here, which is more exciting than if I took up a job in Iowa or something. But still. I get tired of working in a cubicle sometimes."

That isn't what she expected, but then, Rob has been good about surprising her today. She can barely imagine him roughing it in the desert with shovels and brushes. Nothing is as it seems. He is like her. All of her life, she has been taking the practical path, hardly pushing the envelope. Up until now, it suited her just fine. "Do you regret it?"

"Not really," he says. "I live a nice life. Normal. Middle-class. I could do much worse in the world. It was not much more than a pipe dream. Something I think about when I get really frustrated with work or when I'm looking up at the stars on a clear night, wondering where else my life could've turned. But hey, everyone has something they regret in their lives, right?"

"Mm, yes," Liza says. "Maybe."

"Don't tell me there isn't anything you would've liked to do over. Maybe not gotten so wasted that you woke up next to a homeless man in college that one time. Maybe not cheated on that spelling test in third grade." He grins.

"Nope," she lies. "I don't regret anything. Forward-thinking, yes sir, that's me." She wants to tell him the truth. Here he is, earnestly taking her out on a date, sitting across from her, telling her his childhood dreams, and she is closed up. It's not fair, really. If she really wants to let go, she would _let go_. She would close the last chapter of her life and move on. For some reason, she can't. And it really pisses her off, because how dare James and Thalia and the whole fucking Greek pantheon have a grip on her three months after the encounter and two hundred miles away? If she were honest with herself, she moved to New York to escape them, not to start brand new.

But she is bad at being honest with herself, so they meander through the date, and before she knows it, he's walking her home. Nighttime is cooler and it calms her down. The city lights, even she has to admit, have a beauty about them that she is glad she came to New York to see. It has a modern, futuristic feel that Washington D.C. would never attain with its creaking historical monuments and dusty streets.

Rob is telling her some joke, recounting a story of how clumsy he was when he first started the job, and she is only barely listening. She is looking at the way he has a lopsided smile and how he has the lightest sprinkle of freckles on his cheekbones, and thinking, he is quirky and kind, and the type of guy she should really give a chance. He deserves it. If she is serious about moving on, letting go, like she repeats in her head, she will let him hold her hand and they will step into a new future together. Things could be good.

Like a perfect gentleman, he does hold her hand. If she closes her eyes, she can imagine them walking through Central Park six months from now, laughing and kissing – erasing old memories under inky sky.

If she wants, she can let herself fall for him.

He walks her up to the front door of her apartment. She fumbles for her keys, knowing what will come next. With the backdrop of the swish of traffic and the electronic blinking of neon signs, he leans in close, grips her at the waist. He presses his lips against hers, flat and sweet.

It's then, in a burst of clarity, she knows.

When he pulls away, he whispers, "I like you a lot, Liza Allen."

The feelings in her chest tumble against each other – relief, regret, and resignation. Slowly, she puts her arms around his neck and kisses him softly on the cheek. "I like you too." She waits a few beats to collect her thoughts. "But I can't be with you."

The hurt flashes across his face, bare and painful. "Oh."

She touches his arm. "It's not you. I realized something. Just now." She smiles hopefully at him. "I realized what it is I regret. You helped me realize it, even though I knew it all along. I was being stupid, and I shouldn't have dragged you into it. I should thank you. But I don't think that's what you want to hear." The kiss meant nothing. It meant nothing in the only way that a kiss can – which is to say that there is another kiss that might mean a little bit more. Even after all of this, she thinks. She is afraid, and she doesn't know if that will ever change.

Still. Some things cannot be denied.

"I'm sorry," she says, thinking of laughing and kissing and erasing memories under an inky sky in Central Park. What could've been, but won't be, because that's not the way fate has it worked out for her. Love is a funny thing.

He steps back, sadness and a bit of anger in his eyes. "Me too, Liza. Me too."

..o..

James and Thalia sit outside on the steps of the Aerospace Museum. She hands him the broken flashlight. "Gee, thanks," he says dryly. "A whole lot of use I have for it now." They watch the traffic go by for several minutes, neither of them saying anything.

"I couldn't find Liza," Thalia offers finally. "I tried looking everywhere, but it's like she disappeared off of the face of the earth." She looks at him at last. "I'm sorry."

"S'okay," he says, smiling at her half-heartedly. "It's not your fault she wanted to get as far away as possible." For once, he doesn't feel annoyed with her, even though she broke his stuff. He is actually kind of happy that she is here, with him, because these past few days, he's been lonely and looking for a familiar face.

"What are you going to do now?" she asks him.

He shrugs. "Not knowing where she is doesn't really change my plans. I was planning on getting my degree in criminal justice. Tracking down thieves seems right up my alley. I'm a real reform story. I'm tired of living perpetually as a teenager. I dunno, I guess Liza did something good, eh?"

"I'm proud of you," Thalia says. "Liza didn't do anything. You always had it in you."

That's not true, though. He might've always had it in him, but he would've been a wanderer until the day he died unless he met Liza again. She is just one of those people, one of the few people in his life who makes him want to try. He wants all the time to be mad at her. But with her, it's like the anger fades away in the mornings or peters out before he goes to bed, and it's too tiring to maintain a grudge that he doesn't really hold. "Maybe," he says.

Maybe Thalia hears the wistfulness in his voice. Maybe for once she understands, so she puts her hand on his. "Hey."

"Yeah?"

"I'm sorry."

"You already apologized. It's okay that you didn't find her. It's not that big of a deal; I didn't think you were going to anyway."

She sighs. "No, I mean, I'm sorry about what happened in Mnemosyne's hotel. I shouldn't have tried to make you drink out of the fountain. I was being selfish. Man, I already tried to do this once." She blinks rapidly – _is she crying?_ "And I probably ruined a good thing. It's basically my fault. It gets lonely sometimes, you know?"

He knows exactly, and yet he has no idea at the same time. What could it possibly be like to be immortal? There isn't much he can say to help her. "Stop being an idiot," he says, nudging her with his knee.

"Really comforting," she retorts.

"I'm your friend now. And whenever you feel like you're running out of people to stalk and annoy, I'll be here for you." He claps her on the back. "That's what friends are for."

She stares at him, until slowly, she breaks into a genuine smile. "Yeah. I guess so."

And it's true. They _are_ friends now, he and her, with or without the memories. He's actually glad about that. He never thought he'd end up being friends with a Hunter, but life takes you on funny journeys. He is glad he was a part of this one.

Face turned upward toward the night sky, she says without looking at him, "You really like her, don't you?"

He doesn't need to ask who she's talking about. "Yeah," he replies. "Yeah, I do." He interlaces his fingers and stares at the ground. "It's kind of stupid though." Laughs. She's gone. They both know that.

"Then don't give up," she says simply, turning her electric gaze back on him. "I'm telling you that, as a friend."

He snorts.

"Hey, seriously now! When has my advice ever turned you wrong? What do you have to lose anyway?"

"Oh, I don't know. A broken heart. Being perpetually useless in love. There are a lot of things to lose, Thalia."

She rolls her eyes and shifts toward him. "You're so melodramatic. There are a lot of things to lose if you give up now too. Nobody gives up after the first try. Don't be such a loser."

"You know, I really enjoy how our relationship consists of entirely of insults. And by 'enjoy,' I mean, 'am constantly annoyed by.'"

She bumps him with her shoulder. "You know it works. So what are you going to do?"

Thalia isn't making things easy for him. What _can_ he do? He meant to just stay in D.C., establish a life here, learn to move on. That would be the smart thing to do. The logical thing to do. Of course, he hasn't been very logical lately. He followed a fifteen-year-old Hunter to meet a girl on the steps of the Department of Education that he'd never heard of before. He took a quest, even though he swore he'd never do one again. He even believes at this point that he really was Percy Jackson, even though he can't draw up any memories. Logic has not been his strong point since he met Thalia.

That might not be such a bad thing.

"I think," he says slowly, "I'm going to go to Camp Half-Blood for a little bit. My classes are already over for the semester, and this is a temporary job anyway. I'm feeling nostalgic. It'll be a good time to go back to where it all started." _I am being brave,_ he thinks. He hasn't been back in such a long time. He wonders if things will look different when he gets there.

"I think that's a good idea," Thalia says.

..o..

Going to Camp Half-Blood is like coming home after a very long vacation. The smell of strawberries is heady in the air. Argus gives him a lazy wink – or about fifty winks, if anyone's counting. The counselors are screaming directions, clouds of tiny summer aphids immediately start swarming around him, and the thick, choking humidity greet him as he steps across the border.

In other words, it's so absolutely beautiful that it leaves a lump in his throat. It's impossible to know the depth of how much he's missed this place. Camp Half-Blood has the golden sheen of an untouched paradise. A better time.

Nobody seems to pay any attention to him as he walks along the side of the target practice fields, the combat arena, and around to the Big House. Maybe it's because everyone who is here, pretty much belongs here. The main door is open as it usually is to allow some free-flowing air circulation. The air conditioning in the Big House has been broken ever since he can remember, and nobody has bothered to fix it. For some reason, this strikes him as ridiculous right now, because any god could probably fix it with the snap of a finger, yet nobody has. He knocks on the doorframe, faded blue paint chipping all over the place. "Chiron?"

There isn't a sound. Well, where could the old centaur have gone? He slips his hands in his pockets and wanders off, thinking he might spend the night here if he can, stay a couple of days to clear his mind. He meanders through the fields and through part of the wooded area, just reminding himself of some of the memories that have been made here.

He walks past the clearing where Hermes finally claimed him and the bushes where he got into his first serious fight with an Ares kid – Joe Pastorelli – knocked his head wide open and had to get seven stitches behind his ear, plus kitchen duty for two months. He even walks past the pavilion where he snuck out in the middle of the night to have his first kiss with the Demeter girl – Violet Holmes.

He's walking past the lake when he sees someone sitting with her knees drawn up to her chin, toes dabbling in the water. She has golden hair and looks like –

"Hello," Liza says. "Fancy seeing you here."

And what is he supposed to say to that? Stopped completely in his tracks, he manages to say, "I thought they had tighter border security here."

She laughs – he suddenly realizes that it may possibly be the loveliest sound he's heard in months – and pats the grass next to her. There's nothing for it. He sits down next to her. The lake spreads before them and the sunlight splinters on the surface into a thousand shining pieces. "Chiron told me that since I'd gone to the underworld and back, there's really no way I can _not_ be a part of this world anymore. I already had the Sight. It was only a little jump from that to full-blown mythological freak. The border only blocks mortals. I'm – well, I'm not exactly a normal mortal anymore. Plus, Argus and I are friends now, so there's that."

"Oh," he hears himself saying. "Argus and you are friends now." Really, it's remarkable how he can make it sound so conversational and not completely ridiculous. "You chat a lot, I'm guessing? You in a book club together?"

"Something like that." She chuckles. "I've been here for a week now. It's nice. And for some reason, Chiron hasn't kicked me out yet. I was wondering how long I could bum here before he'd say something."

James admires the way her hair has grown longer since he's last seen her. It falls in a tangled cascade all the way down her back. He wants to run his fingers through it. "That's not fair. He kicked me out on my twenty-seventh birthday. It was a great birthday present, really made me feel loved and appreciated. I guess he treats you nicer because you're a pretty girl."

She nods solemnly. "I do like to use my looks as a bribe."

Is he allowed to put her arm around her now? Kiss her, maybe? He can't decide why she's shown up. How long are they going to stick with the safe, teasing talk before they are forced to face the inevitable conversation?

"I didn't tell you that I moved to New York," she says.

Not long, apparently. "Okay," he says, trying his best not to sound judgmental or ticked off that she didn't even leave a calling card.

She glances at him furtively, embarrassed almost. "I know. I can recognize your 'I'm-pissed-but-trying-to-hide-it' expression. It's the way your eyebrows jump for a split-second. I'm not saying you aren't entitled to be pissed. And I know that I can apologize, but you probably won't hear it anyway. You're being remarkably nice to me in spite of everything, and I appreciate it."

"Liza—"

She puts up a hand. "No, wait. Just hear me out first before you start yelling. Then, I promise I'll sit here and take it."

"_Liza—_"

Sharply, she makes the "zip your lips" motion with her fingers. He gives up. He wasn't going to yell at her, isn't going to yell at her. He _should_ yell at her, but how can he? "I moved to New York and didn't tell anybody. I was tired of living in D.C., and I was just too freaked out and cautious to sever ties with the place. But I'm glad I did. I have a job at an accounting firm – not a great job, but it's somewhere I can go from. I'm happy." She looks away from him. "I started dating this guy from the firm."

James feels his throat constrict. "Okay," he says, using the same faked neutral voice.

"He's really nice. He graduated from Georgetown too, a year before me. He likes Greek mythology. He likes classical music, too." Her face softens. "Our favorite composer is Debussy."

_Why is she telling me this?_ He wonders if it's possible for anyone to feel so crushed. It's like his heart has literally stopped beating. He wants to just get up and leave, but she asked him to hear her out. If she wanted to let him down easy, she could've written a letter or something. This is plain torture. She's basically listing all of the ways _this guy_ is better than he is, and while he would like an explanation of why she pretty much dumped him, he doesn't need her to go into excruciating detail. Her laundry list of how great they are for each other isn't going to convince him.

She takes a deep, shuddering breath. "What I mean to say is, Rob and I fit together. We make a good couple. I like him. And I want you to know, he kissed me."

James is still.

"But I told him that we couldn't be together."

He is going to kick Rob's ass from here to – wait, what? "Why?" he asks, completely bewildered. "I thought you just told me that you were perfect for each other. What about your shared love of Debussy?" He doesn't mean to come across as sharp and nasty, but it slips out somehow anyway.

"We love Debussy, but I don't love him." She turns the full power of her stunning gray eyes on him. "I think – I think I might love you. Maybe."

His heart restarts, does a little jig and jumps into his throat. He leans toward her. "Maybe? Maybe's good. I could deal with maybe." Hope swells inside him like a hot air balloon and threatens to carry him away.

"I'm scared," she says and stopping him. "I didn't want you to drink the water and be forced to love me because of something that happened before we were even born. I'm scared that this isn't real."

The shadows stand out under her eyes. Illuminated, he sees the fears reflected in her wide, dark pupils. He sees a little girl with dirty knees and pigtails, waiting for him. "You don't have to worry about that," he tells her at last, "because I'm pretty sure I fell in love with you way before we were even close to that stupid fountain. I just didn't know it. I might not even have known it until recently. But the girl that I love, I met her a long time ago. I met her on a playground, and she had me at her ridiculous private-school uniform and Disney princess lunchbox. That's about as real as it gets." He puts his hand on hers. "You have to trust me, Lizzy."

She swallows. "I trust you."

"Do you really?"

She gives a small smile. "Yeah, really."

"Okay," he says. And she looks so painfully beautiful in the afternoon glow and he's waited so long for this; the lake is so bright it makes his eyes water and his vision blink in and out. So he does what the moment calls for – he grabs her and pulls her over the edge.

With a splash, they fall into the lake. He hears her shriek with laughter and fleetingly, he catches the scent of her lemon soap before they go under into the cool deep blue and underwater, he kisses her –

..o..

_"Then up on Olympus when they wanted to make me a god and stuff, I kept thinking—"_

"_Oh, you so wanted to."_

"_Well, maybe a little. But I didn't, because I thought – I didn't want things to stay the same for eternity, because things could always get better. And I was thinking…"_

The dots connect.

..o..

They surface, gasping for air, to a whole new world.

Liza is crying, but nobody can tell because of the water. Bravely, she puts on a smile and says weakly, "You know, I think that may have worked better the first time around as I remember it. You, with the water powers and all, so we didn't get completely drenched. Any chance you'll get those back too?"

He dunks them again.

"Ah, thought not," she says, coming up and dripping water. "Just to be sure, you remember now too, right? I'm not feeling like my head's about to explode all by myself, am I?"

"I'm right here with you. We'll be all right." He kisses her again, hands in her hair and holding her to him, and it's like two puzzle pieces, finally falling in place.

They scramble out of the water and stand on the shore, looking out at a sunset that streaks the sky with brilliant bands of color. He presses a kiss to her temple, wraps his arm around her waist. He doesn't need to say a thing, because for once, everything in the universe has righted itself. They watch until the first stars come twinkling out and don't even mind their wet clothes. It is a new moon tonight.

"So," he says eventually. "What do we do now?"

"We go home. We live happily ever after," she says. "Or something like that. I don't know how well it all works out. I think third time's supposed to be a charm."

"I guess we'll see," he agrees, smiling. "I guess we'll see."

..o..

**Author's note:** This story has just spiraled out of control and taken its own direction. I wanted it to be three one-shots, but it ended up being pretty much a novel. So there you have it. It has been a huge blessing to write, even when it was being a pain in the ass. The only thing left is the epilogue, which will be a short, simple thing that hopefully won't be too much of a challenge to write.

A million thanks goes to **Kioko** for her encouragement, for the late night/early morning chats about writing and Percy Jackson and Hot Pockets, all of which got me through the actual writing of this thing. You're the bestest fandom BFF ever, and I totally don't deserve you, dear.

Also, to **oneoffour111**, who I beta for and is always so nice and wonderful to me and pimps my fic and makes me blush for realsies. You're such a sweetheart, and you make my day when you write fic.

Thanks to all the readers. You guys rock my world, because I write for you, seriously. I'm so grateful to be able to share my writing with you.

Look for the epilogue (I will try and not make it a total fluff-fest), and leave a review if you can!


	7. Epilogue

**Author's note: **A year too late, but there it is. Hope you're all enjoying Son of Neptune.

**Disclaimer:** Don't own. Also, please don't sue me, Tyra Banks and J.K. Rowling.

* * *

**Epilogue**

* * *

"_Forever is composed of nows."_ **– Emily Dickinson**

...

The end is much like the beginning.

Well, she thinks, this isn't how I imagined it would go.

When she opens her eyes, she knows in the pit of her stomach that she is dead. And this is the last time she will open her eyes to new death. It's a strange feeling, she decides. How is it, to know that she will never again take a breath and have it mean anything? How is it, to know she is frozen here in the same moment for eternity? Eternity is an unfathomable thing, scary even. The journey is over, and this is the destination. It's going to take awhile for her to figure out whether or not it is a good destination to be.

Annabeth keeps pinching herself while she waits to reach the front gates. It hurts. It leaves faint pink marks on her skin. They surprise her. She used to think dead people didn't hurt. The people around her look dazed. This is how she looks too, she realizes. _We are all confused. And waiting._ Waiting for what?

The line gets shorter and shorter. The placard above the door reads: Judging Hall. Ah, she remembers now. This is where they tell her what her final destination is. She glances at the people in front of her and behind her and think about what kind of stories they might have to tell. She rifles through her own memory and tries to figure out what stories she has to tell. But her memory is fuzzy at the moment, like vision after corrective surgery. There are colorful, blurry snippets of wonderful things. Her lives must have been good.

The woman in front of her enters the room. She'll be next. She straightens her clothes, suddenly feeling very ill-prepared for making her case. Will she even be given the opportunity to make a case? Will they just look at her and see everything they need to know? How long will this take anyway? She scans the line. Everyone looks so alone. Doesn't anyone have family? This strikes her as an absurd question. Where is her family? Why is she alone?

The door opens eventually, filling the hallway with light. The line behind her shuffles anxiously. She blinks and takes a step back. "Well?" a voice says. "Come in now. Don't dawdle."

Annabeth braces herself and walks into a courtroom. The front table is mahogany with a leather swiveling chair where her name tag is clearly displayed: Ms. Annabeth Chase and in smaller curly font, _aliases Rose Parker, Liza Allen_. She approaches the table but stays standing. The judges sit on an elevated platform with a desk of warm blond wood, two women and a man.

"All right, let's get this started." The judges all have identical manila folders in front of them with her name written on the front with a firm, square hand – black permanent marker.

For the first time, Annabeth looks at – no, really looks at who the judges are. The circles of their bland faces become recognizable features. "Oh," she says. Then, she wrinkles her nose. "Not who I expected. I know you." Her memory does a quick reel of the past few hundred years of pop culture, apparently the only thing she can recall.

Thomas Jefferson sits in the middle with a gavel, surprisingly accurate to the profile on the nickel. On his left is J. K. Rowling, blond hair in a bit of a mess like she just rolled out of bed. On his left is Tyra Banks, sleek brown hair and large hoop earrings, completely unmistakable. Annabeth allows herself a moment to take it in. She tries to not feel too put off by the fact that these are the people who are in charge of deciding her fate. The Thomas Jefferson part isn't that off-putting, as he was never alive when she was. But she keeps sneaking looks at Tyra who is smiling widely the whole time as if a television camera is trained on her face, and it's hard to take the situation very seriously. Meanwhile, Jo is looking quite bored with the whole thing and flipping through the manila folder the way one might flip through channels at three in the morning on a Thursday.

"Annabeth Chase," says Thomas Jefferson – _Thomas Jefferson!_ – with a benevolent expression. Annabeth decides that he is the one she is going to like the most. Maybe the centuries on the job have mellowed him out. Maybe Jo and Tyra haven't gotten to that stage yet. "Good record," he remarks. "We certainly have some potential here."

"I didn't know you were demigods," Annabeth says.

Jo puts her elbows on the table. "Of course we are. It should be obvious, shouldn't it? Tom here is a son of Athena. I am a daughter of Calliope, the muse of epics. Technically, I'm a direct descendent of Homer. You might've heard of him, possibly." She says this as woodenly as one might make a passing observation on the weather. "And Ms. Banks is a daughter of Aphrodite. Shocking, I know. You probably could've guessed that."

Tyra doesn't seem to notice Jo's damp attitude. "Pleased to meet you," she chirps.

"Erm – yes, ditto," Annabeth replies. It hits her that she and Jefferson are siblings. Sort of. Wow, that's definitely not something that she can wrap her head around right now.

Jefferson puts on a pair of old-fashioned bifocals ("Originals from Ben Franklin's earliest batch," he says with a cheeky wink.) and adjusts them on his nose. "Let's see. This is your third time around. Ambitious one we have here. I suppose it's not a surprise. We've been placing bets since your first life. You see, it's been a very long time since someone as high-profile as yourself has entered the Isles. You might imagine. It's normally around ten or so a century, depending on whether or not there has been any worldwide upheaval. Oh, no, don't look so downcast!" he exclaims. "There are a hundred or more a century that get to Elysium, but most of them don't try for three times. And there's nothing wrong with Elysium. It's a lovely place, especially with the new renovations, simply marvelous. I might have to take a stroll around there myself when I finally get around to taking a day off." He has a sprightly twinkle in his eye; surprising, for a man who has seen the firsthand results of centuries of war and upheaval from unusually good vantage point of the underworld.

"It's fabulous!" Tyra cuts in. "You have to drop by, Tom, and see the new spa. It takes years off of your skin."

Jo very visibly rolls her eyes. "You're dead. There aren't any years you can take off."

Tyra flaps her hands like an overeager bird. "Girl, you know what I mean. That avocado facemask is divine. Literally! If I could spend the rest of eternity in there, I would."

"Please do," says Jo.

"Well, _someone_ woke up on the wrong side of the bed today." Tyra flips her hair. "I bet a visit to the spa would improve your mood."

"No," Jo says through gritted teeth, "what would improve my mood is if Hades didn't screw up the scheduling and put me on Tuesdays and Thursdays. He _knows_ there are certain people I don't like working with, and he does it anyway! Sometimes, I wonder just what exactly he's doing in his cushy throne room if he can't process requests correctly. Honestly!" She jabs her thumb at Tyra. "I changed the face of the literature in my lifetime. What the bloody hell did _she_ do, eh?" She sits back in her chair, fuming. On the other side, Tyra is hyperventilating like she's about to rip out some of Jo's hair.

Jefferson leans forward with a pained, embarrassed expression – or perhaps he leans forward to prevent Tyra from launching herself at Jo. "Please, ladies. Can we leave the personal problems for a private time?" Neither of them responds.

"Thank you," he continues with a sigh. "Please offer me your judgments now." They all write something down on a scrap of paper and hand it to Jefferson. Annabeth feels uncomfortable. This is all the slightest bit awkward. She shifts her weight from one foot to another.

Jefferson's eyebrows jump to his hairline. "All right, then." He writes something down on the bottom of the page. He arranges his fingers into a steeple in front of him. "Has your memory improved any, Ms. Chase?" He smiles on her kindly.

"Erm, sort of."

"Yes, yes, it takes a little adjusting to. Some people are slower to recover their memories than others. Don't fret. It'll all come back to you soon enough. The good things come first, so don't be too upset when the rest of it trickles in. It is, um, a recurring problem. Some of the newly dead have a hard time coping with the bad things."

Annabeth wonders what bad things she might remember soon.

"We give them the option of forgetfulness. It is a – a kind of anesthetic, you could say. But most people choose to keep theirs. As a memento, of sorts." He scans her portfolio again, underlining some paragraphs in pen. She notices that Jefferson uses a quill while Jo and Tyra use ballpoint pens. Culture dies hard, even after death.

Then, she realizes what he has just said. "Wait – but only people who go to the Isles of the Blest have the option of keeping their memories. Does that mean—"

He smiles so broadly that his whole face beams. "Yes, dear heart. I have reason to believe you deserve it. Oh, you will love it. I'm so happy for you." He snaps his fingers and suddenly, Annabeth finds herself wearing a white sundress with a certificate of congratulations in her hand.

"You certainly have what it takes," Tyra says, twinkling fondly. She stands up and glides around the table, sweeping her long hair behind her shoulder, and before Annabeth has a chance to protest, Tyra swoops in for the hug. Her stilettos make it suitably difficult, since Annabeth is so much shorter. Tyra smells like Gucci perfume.

Annabeth pats her back awkwardly. "Thank you," she says, not knowing how else to respond.

"This is just the best part of this job." She tilts her head to one side. "Making peoples' dreams come true."

Jo finally musters up the tolerance to put on a positive expression too. "I enjoyed meeting you, Ms. Chase. We were all in unanimous agreement, which I assure you, is not something that happens very often." She shoots a very definite look in Tyra's direction. "Therefore, I can say, you are a special young woman, and I wish you the best for eternity."

Annabeth is quite flattered, naturally. "No," she stumbles. "It was an honor to meet you, Ms. Rowling."

Jo looks pleased, which is something Annabeth hasn't seen this whole time.

The door on the left opens. "Follow the path and once you cross the river, you'll be at the gates of the Isles. Good luck, Annabeth. Have a good afterlife," Jefferson says.

She walks to the door and for the first time, sees real, true sunlight. She doesn't know where it's coming from, but it's as golden as anything she's ever seen on earth. She pauses and looks back. All three judges smile in her direction. Feeling considerably lighter and surer of herself, she steps through the door and onto the path to paradise.

..o..

Percy steps off of the Sky Train, feeling a bit curious about making the underworld his permanent home. It _is_ nice, not being old anymore. He could run a marathon. He could spar for hours on end and not worry about snapping a bone. He stretches. Fantastic.

The last thing he can remember is being alone. He knows he wasn't always alone – there used to be someone there on the other side of the bed. But that person wasn't there, or maybe she was already gone by the time it was his last moment. He remembers the sterile white of the hospital and hoping to find a familiar face. He doesn't know, at this point, if he'd recognize a familiar face should he see one. His memory is obnoxiously blurry. And when he strains, it gives him a headache.

The smallness of the waiting room combined with the impatient jostling of people in line make him claustrophobic. He keeps looking around in hopes of seeing someone he knows. But there's no one. Or maybe there is, but he just doesn't know it. Maybe they don't know it either. That woman over there with the sleek brown hair and friendly dark eyes could've been someone in his life. He tries to remember her. He doesn't.

Everyone here is so wrapped up in their own world. He wishes desperately that he had someone to talk to. But no one seems particularly inclined to strike up conversation.

In his head, he daydreams of yellow hair and water. He dreams of bacon macaroni and cheese and nibbling perfect toes. Airplanes and maps.

The line moves forward and he shakes himself out of his reverie. Was it real or something made up?

He wishes –

..o..

The Isles are incredible, just like Jefferson and Tyra said they would be. It's as if every beautiful thing on earth has been perfectly copied and brought to illuminate this place. And the sky. Nobody will be able to convince her that it's not real. It's definitely real. Somehow, the sky has moved underground – she is quite sure of this. It's blue and infinitely deep and oh, she is sure she will be happy here. In the distance, craggy purple mountains scrape against the edge of the sky. She can see cerulean icy lakes too, nestled in the valleys.

There are fields of flowers and golden grass, crystal clear rivers, and even a sandy-pale beach with foamy ocean waves. Where the ocean ends, she doesn't know. Of course, there is also a city, a glorious city of marble, gold, steel, and cement, which somehow manages to look futuristic and classical at the same time, and not just tacky. Daedalus, she thinks with surprise, as the memory of him surfaces. She is sure Daedalus helped construct this. Maybe Daedalus is here, even.

She walks through the fields, picking a few daisies and working them into her hair absentmindedly. Over in the distance, a soft thunderstorm rolls in, as the blue skies shift to gray. Warm, summery raindrops dribble over the earth, moistening the soil and rolling off leaves like little iridescent beads. She doesn't mind it, but as if in response to the storm, she notices a yellow umbrella caught in the branches of a raspberry bush. The Isles really do provide everything. She wonders whether a roast beef sandwich would appear on a plate with a mug of hot chocolate if she suddenly decided she was hungry. Or if people even get hungry here. This could be good, she thinks. She was never a good cook when she was alive, after all.

There it is. Another memory. What else can she remember?

There was a place. A summer camp, and the images flash in her mind, one after the other. A pine tree that wasn't a pine tree. Long Island Sound. The way the sand clumped between her toes when she walked on the beach. She went to college. Or was it several different universities? Did she waitress or did she work in a cubicle? She furrows her brow. There was a boy. She can't remember now what he looks like, but he was important. Yes. Was he a brother? A best friend?

She realizes that there are three layers of memories, and they are all blending together, the distinct colors and sounds becoming murky into a one-dimensional plane. She must learn to separate them.

Then, there's a figure walking toward her in the rain under a red umbrella. It's hard to see through the curtain of rain, and the umbrella shields the person's features. The edge of the canopy lifts to reveal a smiling face.

"Hello, Annabeth."

Bewildered, she looks at him more closely. He is tall and handsome, about a head taller than her. Fair with blue eyes that dance and lips that lift a little higher on the left side than the right. He has a small, white scar right above his eye. "I always knew I'd find you here eventually," he says, his gaze never-wavering.

She is horribly embarrassed. This guy has clearly been waiting for her, and dear gods, she doesn't even know his name. She coughs lightly. "Um, I'm sorry, but I'm not positive – I mean – who are you again?" That came out well. Okay, this is only awkward if she wants to make it awkward …

He doesn't even seem fazed. Chuckles, even. "That's all right," he says. "I only came to greet an old friend. Family, you could even call it." He edges closer to her casually. "You know, it's been a long time since I've seen you. Hundreds of years, actually. You look really good. Just like I remember and not a hair out of place. Maybe a little older, but it does you well."

"Family?" she asks cautiously. "Are we related?" It's possible. They're both blonde.

"No, not in the blood sense. I'm Luke." He extends a hand and she shakes it, feeling a bit bemused and still very amnesiac. "I'm sorry I can't tell you any more. It's policy not to overwhelm the new arrivals on the Isles. They're supposed to come to their senses by themselves. It's always easier when it's slow recovery. Actually, I'm probably not even supposed to show myself to you yet, at least not until you get your memories back." He gestures toward the golden-gated entrance. "Luckily, I've never really been one for the rules."

"Nice to meet you, Luke. I'd love to tell you that wow, the memories are flooding back, and I remember that time you came over for Thanksgiving and we got along sportingly, unfortunately, I don't remember a damn thing. I'm sure I will soon."

Their umbrellas touch. "I'm sure you will." He grins at her, as if drinking in the very sight of her. She squirms slightly, uncomfortable under his searching looks. "I'm glad you got here first. Makes it much more convenient for me."

"What d'you mean, first?"

"Oh," he says, as something like guilt flashes across his face and he scratches the back of his head. "I'm botching this up pretty badly. Let's just say, we have a mutual friend who's a few steps behind. And the last time I saw him, we didn't exactly end on the greatest of terms, so it would be kind of strange if I ran into him right away."

Annabeth tries to wrangle with this. "Could you narrow things down for me, Luke? Because all of this, not gonna lie, is super vague." She stops for a moment and then squints in pain. "Owww, my head."

Luke bends toward her in concern. "You okay?"

She rubs her temples. It feels like her brain is swelling into her skull. She tells him this.

"Yeah, recovering your memories is a rough process."

Drawing small circles into her head with her fingertips, she scowls. "I thought going to the Isles meant the end of pain and suffering."

Luke laughs, and Annabeth decides it's a friendly – and familiar – sound. "Are you picking up some stuff yet?" is all he says.

She slows her breathing, closes her eyes, and probes deep into her mind. "I get these pieces, but I don't know how they fit together or how they're important." She burns with frustration. "Why couldn't they have just given me some potion to drink and then _voila!_ everything gets restored. They have stuff like that, right? I mean, this is the underworld. They should have stuff like that."

"They used to. Now, they don't because, erm, something about how we're all supposed to be more organic with our consumption, and that potion is basically magical medication. It's a new fad that Persephone introduced. All the rage down here. Anyway, there are three layers, so it's hard. But I find it easiest if you focus on your first life," he suggests. "Your first life has the greatest essence of your soul, and it's the part of you that is carried from one body to another. Your brain never fully loses those memories. Not really."

"Okay," she says uncertainly. The rain gradually gets lighter and creates a soothing rhythm against the surface of her umbrella. "Camp Half-Blood. That was the name, wasn't it? I grew up there. And there was a centaur named Chiron. My father was – my father was who, I can't remember – but my mother" – she wrinkles her brow – "my mother was Athena." She looks up at him expectantly. "Am I right?"

He smiles at her. "Yep. Keep going."

..o..

"Next!"

Percy enters the Judging Hall. Up until now, standing in line with everyone else, he's been trying desperately to conjure up some memories of his past, half-hoping they'd be good ones so he could be like, _see, see, I deserve to go somewhere good, yes?_ and half afraid they would prove the opposite. He could've been a terrorist in a past life. Obviously, he doesn't have any urge _now_ to go blow up some people, but hey, he could have been radically different before he died.

So this is what he's thinking about, panicking about, before he sets foot into the room, and then all of a sudden, it's like a small bomb has gone off. Chairs scraping and gavels banging on wood.

"Percy Jackson, oh my gods, it's Percy Jackson!"

He blinks against the fluorescent lighting. "That's me," he says, not knowing what else to say. "_I think_." He has no idea what he's done to inspire such enthusiasm.

"Sit down, Tyra, sit your arse down, seriously," another female voice snaps in a British accent. "This is supposed to be fair and balanced, and that's going to be rather difficult if you insist on acting like you've just soiled yourself."

And now, he is really confused. His eyes adjust enough so that he can make out the figures sitting behind the mahogany table. "Whoa." The one on the right, the one who is practically bouncing out of her chair, is Tyra Banks, complete with caramel-highlighted weave and million-watt grin. The other two – well, he was never a big reader and he definitely doesn't recognize a lot of old, dead guys on sight, but the placards in front of them read, _J.K. Rowling_ and _Thomas Jeffjerson._ He swallows hard. "Hey."

"Hello, yourself, Mr. Jackson," Thomas Jefferson says. "You've been a much-anticipated arrival, as you can see." He glances at Tyra, who actually does look like she might be wetting her pants. "Two high-profiles in one day. Well, isn't that something."

Percy doesn't know what the last part means, but apparently, everyone knows who he is. "I hope I didn't, like, accidentally blow up something giant in my lifetime or cause Olympus to come crashing down. Because," he says frankly, "I really hope that's not the reason everyone is so excited to see me."

"No, certainly not." He arches an eyebrow sternly. "You did cause several massive explosions and destroyed a couple of national monuments, though."

Percy blanches, but Jefferson only chortles. "Forgive me. I do like to tease the new arrivals. No, Mr. Jackson, I can say, we have nothing but good things to say about you. Even if almost all of the gods have hated you at some point, they seem to like you more and more as time passes. Probably because they don't necessarily remember interacting with you in person. You could be – what's the word – _abrasive_, but of course, now they recall all of the good things. Even Dionysus. He had quite a sour perception of you while you were alive, if I recall.

"Mr. D," Percy starts out, and then stops. "Wow, I think I remember him. Pudgy guy, red nose, really grumpy without his booze fix?"

"Erm," Jefferson says.

"Yeah, that's definitely him!" Percy beams. "I haven't seen him in forever. Probably up to his old shenanigans by now."

"Hmm, I can see why the gods had a problem with this one," Jefferson says to the women. "Such irreverence! It's a marvel he's made it this far without being blasted to bits somewhere along the way."

For a second, Percy thinks Jefferson might be peeved or shocked, but the twinkle in the bespectacled old man's eyes indicate that he is only amused. He puts down the gavel and opens a manila folder with formidable contents. The stack of papers is at least three inches thick. "Your records," he says, with a quirk of a smile. "Yes, there are secretaries in the underworld who keep track of this kind of thing. We have a well-populated firm here." He adjusts the glasses on the bridge of his nose and peers over the rim. "So, Mr. Jackson. Tell us how your memory is faring. What do you remember?"

Well, what does he?

..o..

"Camp smelled sweet in summer with the splitting and rotting strawberries in the fields. A big wooden house with chipped blue paint. My favorite thing was the way Long Island Sound would sparkle on sunny days, and the way the colors always seemed better at camp than anywhere else in the world. I wanted to get away when I was young because all I wanted to do was see everything outside. All I wanted was a quest. But I remember, after coming back from the first one, that the colors were so much better at camp. Like someone took a paintbrush and went over everything within the borders to make it deeper and brighter." Once she starts, she can't stop. The more she thinks about it, the clearer everything gets. It's as if this whole time she's been trying to see through a grimy window, and she finally took some damn Windex to it and the light is coming through. Luke has gone absolutely still, and now, Annabeth knows why. Her heart aches. She takes a quivering breath.

"I went to the pine tree a lot when I needed to do serious thinking, because – because, the tree was a girl. Her name was Thalia, and she took care of me when I ran away from home." Her voice gets quiet. "When I ran away at seven years old, I thought I'd always be alone. I thought I'd spend the rest of my life wandering around, never finding anybody. It was awful. But then Thalia found me." She doesn't dare meet his eyes – it's too much – but there are tears melting in her own. "And Luke, oh Luke, I remember you!"

She drops her umbrella and lunges at him. He catches her in his embrace with one arm and whispers into her neck. "Annabeth, I've waited for you _forever_." She can't tell if he's laughing or crying.

She blinks wetly. "You made it! You made it to the Isles. I knew you would."

"'Course I did. What else did I have to do with my time?" He releases her. "I knew I'd catch you here."

"Shut up," she says, punching his shoulder. "You did not go all the way through three lives to meet me here."

"Okay, okay," he says. "So I kind of enjoyed proving myself too. It was something I had to do. I was a bit of an asshole in my first life until the last five minutes. Sorry about that."

"What happened to your scar?" She holds him at arms' length and really looks at him. He is like before he went on the first quest that destroyed him. He is young and clean and not-Kronos, and the scar that marred the entire side of his face and defined him for the last few years of his life is reduced to a tiny white circle above his eyebrow. And he is smiling, which is probably the most obviously different thing, because Annabeth can't remember the last time Luke actually smiled for real, without a cynical edge or anything.

Luke's fingers reach up to rub it. "I don't know, this is how I came down here. I like to think it's almost gone because I did a decent job atoning for my hideous behavior, but that's probably just me being optimistic." He takes her hand. "I'm really sorry, Annabeth. I mean, I apologized a long time ago, but that was when I was half-dead and after I hurt you. I didn't do right. I wanted so bad to do right."

She leans her forehead against his. "You don't have to apologize. I forgave you a long time ago. You have to know that. Anyway, I'm just glad you're here. And that I know you. Good gods, I know you. I know somebody."

The rain intensifies as they stand under Luke's umbrella.

"I never thought you'd try three times," Luke says. "I thought you'd go to Elysium and be happy there. What made you change your mind?"

"I dunno," she replies. "Actually, I don't even remember making that decision."

..o..

"Not much," Percy admits. "I think I was famous?"

Tyra giggles and bats her eyelashes at him. Wild guess, he muses, daughter of Aphrodite. Gods, there was that one time when the goddess of love herself intercepted his quest in the middle of the desert invited him into her limo and gave him a chat about his love life; can you say super awkward – wait. He stops, marveling at this new bit of the past. Can he actually remember that? No way. He definitely recalls holding up the mirror for her flawless face. And her giggling, which sounds exactly like Tyra's. Or maybe the proper way to think about it is that Tyra's giggles sound exactly like Aphrodite's. But why would Aphrodite ever care about what happened to him? His memory isn't that great yet, but he's almost one hundred percent sure he was not a son of Aphrodite. Makes a face. Definitely not. His fashion sense is proof enough of that.

"You know, it's funny that we're even here talking about this," Jefferson says conversationally. "You almost never would've made it here."

"What do you mean?" Percy says cautiously. Why can't they just tell him what's up with his past life? How much easier would it be! This cryptic shit is really starting to piss him off. Also, he'd like to know where he's going instead of this drawn-out business. That would be kind of nice. Percy gets the sneaking suspicion that judging usually doesn't last this long, but they're enjoying having him here. Which freaks him out even more, because he still doesn't know why he was so important or whatever.

"You could've been immortal," Tyra bursts out. "You could've been a _god_."

"Do you even know how often the gods make that kind of offer?" Jo demands, her words like little punches.

"No?" Percy says. "But I have a feeling you're about to tell me anyway."

"Centuries! A millennia, even. I think you were the last, because the gods couldn't deal with another demigod turning down the offer."

"Wait. Hold on for a second. So you're telling me I was offered immortality? And I turned it down?" Percy can hardly believe his ears. "Is that what you're saying?"

"Well, essentially, yes," Jefferson says. "Part of the reason for your notoriety. Not many demigods reject the offer of immortality. Actually, none except for you." He tips his spectacles down. "You really don't remember anything yet?"

Percy shakes his head mutely.

"Hmm. I thought that would almost certainly spark your memory. You're supposed to remember the big things first, you know, and that seems like something you could pick up quickly. Ah, well. I suppose it will happen when it happens. Seems like that's your style, anyway."

"Right," Percy says. "Okay." The judges stare at him as if waiting for him to do a backflip or something. He shifts uncomfortably on his feet. "Are you going to let me go now? Or am I not allowed to leave until I remember something?"

"You have a choice," Jefferson says. "You can either choose to remember or to discard your past memories. For some people, it's easier to forget. Oedipus, for example. There are some heroes who for one reason or another, come here with too much pain and too much suffering. For them, it is easier to start anew. Although, I should tell you, this is a privilege offered only to certain people. People who are granted the Isles of the Blest."

For once, the other two fall silent. Jefferson gestures to Jo, who produces a scroll, her expression unreadable. "You have come a long way, hero. It is finally time for you to rest."

He takes the scroll, which welcomes him to the Isles, and even he feels a sense of awe. He has been waiting for this. He's not sure for how long or what trials it took to get here, but a deep calmness settles upon him, like the ocean after a storm. And when he says thank you, he really means it.

Yet somehow, he can't shake the feeling that something is missing. Then it dawns on him.

"I'm waiting for someone," he tells the judges.

Gently, Tyra leans in, breathing a tiny sigh. "No, Percy. Someone is waiting for you."

..o..

Luke holds her as she cries softly. She feels as if she might burst.

"You have to take the bad with the good," he says. "It's okay. Everything is going to be okay."

All of the bad things, the terrible things, crowd her head, forcing her to think about them. Three lifetimes worth of loneliness, betrayal, and heartache insist on being remembered, and she has to remember them.

"Everyone warns you about this part if you choose to keep your memories, but nobody can show you how awful it feels." Luke rubs her shoulders, wipes away her tears.

"My father left me alone in a grocery store," she says in a small voice. "It took him five hours to come back. A monster broke my leg, and I had to drag myself under a dumpster to escape." She looks at him. "I lost a child." She shivers. "Once, I died alone."

He has nothing to say to her, because nothing he says can make the hurts of a past life go away. It's a curse, but nothing can be sweet without the contrast of something bitter. It might have taken three lifetimes to learn it. That's why the Isles are a special place. But for now, Annabeth draws the little hurts to her and lets them sink into her heart.

The rainstorm rolls away and leaves drops of water behind that shine like tiny crystals. Luke shakes out his umbrella. Beside them, a daffodil plant blooms spontaneously. Somewhere inside, all of the loose parts settle into place – the bad, the good, and everything in between, for all three lives. She wants to laugh. Of course, here at the end of things, she would be the one who was waiting. He was always late. "You're right," she says eventually. "It's okay. Once, I watched someone die, but before I did, I made him promise to find me."

Beside her, she hears Luke inhale, and she squeezes his hand. "Don't worry," he says quietly. "He doesn't break his promises."

Annabeth smiles and lets the wind dry her tears. "I know. I'm glad."

..o..

Percy leaves the judges and sets out on the path to the Isles. Ahead, there is sunlight. The path winds down and down the hill until it reaches golden gates and through the bars, far away, he can see the most amazing architecture, which he knows someone there probably appreciates a lot.

There's so much he wants to tell her, it's almost impossible to wait. He doesn't know what he will say, and irrationally, he's sort of worried about botching up the first meeting. He does that a lot. This is actually his last chance to do it right. He probably won't though, because that's just how they are. Messy, argumentative, ridiculous, and completely haphazard. It's not bad, he thinks. It hasn't been bad at all.

For once, they might have gotten lucky. But who knows? He has really been lucky all along, if he looks at it in the right light. A long time ago – an extremely long time ago – she gave him a kiss for luck.

Annabeth has been his good luck charm all along.

He puts his hand on the gates. They swing open silently.

This is it. Somewhere out there, she is waiting, and finally – _finally_ – he is here.

* * *

**Author's note: **Thanks for all the reviews. It's been a long ride.


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